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!
Remnants of Tropical Storm "Mekkhala" and a developing mid-latitude low pressure area over East China Sea are expected to join through Thursday, January 22 just south of Japan. The system will slide parallel to the eastern coast of Japan bringing wide spread r
A slow-moving daylight fireball was seen over Houston skies (Texas, US) late Sunday, January 18, 2015 and recorded by Jordan Sterling. The sighting raised a lot of questions after images and videos started appearing on social media, KHOU 11 News reports. Patricia Reiff,
A short, sharp flash of radio waves from a mysterious source up to 5.5 billion light years from Earth has been detected in real-time by CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia. Swinburne University of Technology PhD student, Emily Petroff,
Small planetoids, called Near Earth Objects (NEO), are a concern for space scientists because it is thought that large rocks might strike our planet with devastating force. It is a commonly held belief that such an object caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The
A systematic overview of more than 100 studies comparing organic and conventional farming finds that the crop yields of organic agriculture are higher than previously thought. The study, conducted by UC Berkeley researchers, also found that certain practices could furth
NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer or NEOWISE spacecraft, a space telescope that scans the skies for asteroids and comets, discovered and characterized 40 near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the first year after the mission was re-started in December
Changes in drinking water quality in the 21st Century are coming from a myriad of circumstances, and not all are for the best. Top contenders for why water-drinking quality might become suspect to the average consumer include California's drought conditions, the tec
An analysis of 727 mass die-offs of nearly 2,500 animal species from the past 70 years has found that such events are increasing among birds, fish and marine invertebrates. At the same time, the number of individuals killed appears to be decreasing for reptiles and amph
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured many breathtaking images of the Universe, but one snapshot stands out from the rest: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation.In 1995 Hubble’s iconic image revealed never-before-seen details in the giant columns
These visualizations show the Moon's phases and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2015, as viewed from both northern and southern hemispheres. Each frame represents one hour. In addition, the visualizations show the Moon's orbit position, sub-Earth and su
