The Watchers team and our contributors bring the latest on extreme weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, space weather, and all things science. We're all about making sense of the natural world and keeping you informed on what’s happening. Got a tip or a question? Hit us up using the form at newstips!
A few months before New Horizons was due to reach Pluto, a community of scientists came together to determine just what kind of a environment the mission would experience during its historic flyby.While the simulations aren't 100% conclusive, this first ever attempt
Ocean engineer Brennan Phillips led a team to the remote Solomon Islands in search of hydrothermal activity. They found plenty of activity—including sharks in a submarine volcano. The main peak of the volcano, called Kavachi, was not erupting during their expediti
Half-a-century ago, at the height of the Cold War, the Space Race between two competing superpowers set mankind on an accelerated path toward placing a man on the Moon. In addition to its geopolitical significance, the Moon was central in the evolution of planetary scie
The northern Russian town of Vorkuta, Komi Republic, was blanketed by a heavy midsummer snowfall on July 5, 2015. Vorkuta has a subarctic climate with short, cool summers accompanied by very cold and dry winters. According to Wikipedia, average February temperature is a
A study of jets travelling through the Sun’s corona at speeds between 200-500 km/s has shown that the fast-moving columns of plasma are deflected much more strongly by the Sun’s magnetic field in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. A nor
Astronomers at the Open University have discovered the first quintuple star system containing two eclipsing binary stars. While scientists think that about a third of stars are found in pairs or multiple systems, to find five stars connected to each other is very rare.T
A team of scientists at the Imperial College London have combined 26-year old data with supercomputer simulations and for the first time modelled Neptune's magnetic field in detail. The researchers find that the furthest planet from the Sun has a badly behaved
The following video, captured by Volcano Discovery, shows strong strombolian explosion from Batu Tara volcano, Flores Sea, Indonesia on the evening of July 2, 2015.The eruption is preceded by a gradual build-up with increasing degassing and rockfalls as a result of infl
A previous Picture of the Day published in late 2012 quoted Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester:“The main aurora oval on Jupiter we think should dim when the solar wind blows harder, but what we see is that actually gets brighter, which is totally
Nuclear inspectors in Ukraine have measured a significant increase in radiation in the Chernobyl exclusion zone as a result of heavy wildfires raging in the close proximity of crippled nuclear power station.Radioactive element cesium-137 in the air has reached a level c
