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!
Plastic debris in the marine environment is well known and widely documented, but the quantity of plastic making its way into the world’s oceans and from where it originates has been a mystery until now.A new study published today in the journal Science, quantifie
The small eastern European nation of Croatia has decided to let Christmas come early for its poorest citizens: Under a new initiative aimed at giving them a fresh start, the government is wiping out their debts, leaving some observers to relate the move to an ancient Bi
Seismic waves are helping scientists to plumb the world’s deepest mystery: the planet’s inner core.Thanks to a novel application of earthquake-reading technology, a research team at the University of Illinois and colleagues at Nanjing University in China hav
The US Midwest and surrounding states have endured increasingly more frequent flood episodes over the past half-century, according to a new study by scientists from the University of Iowa.The UI researchers based their findings on daily records collected by the USGS at
Another large snowstorm was affecting New England, US on February 9, 2015 dropping more snow on the region and breaking records.On February 9, NOAA's National Weather Service in Boston, Massachusetts noted that "The 30-day snowfall total at Boston ending 7 a.m.
ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) is ready for its launch and reentry mission on February 11, 2015. The launch is scheduled for 13:00 UTC atop a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Europe’s ambition for a spacecraft to ret
Counting sunspots over time helps in knowing the activity of our star but the two indices used by scientists disagree on dates prior to 1885. Now an international team of researchers has tried to standardise the historical results and has discovered that, contrary to wh
Scientists with the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission are writing a new chapter in the history of comet science. However, institutional science’s understanding of comets is less certain today than at any time before. Recently, the Rosetta team publishe
In a special experiment scheduled for February 27th, ESA and NASA are planning to record, from inside, reentry and disintegration of Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATM).Every mission of ESA’s ATV ferry ends in the same way – filled with Space Station rubbish
Mercury concentrations in Hawaiian yellowfin tuna are increasing at a rate of 3.8 percent or more per year, according to a new University of Michigan-led study that suggests rising atmospheric levels of the toxic substance are to blame. Mercury is a toxic trace metal th
