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!
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A definitive geological timeline shows that a series of massive volcanic explosions 66 million years ago spewed enormous amounts of climate-altering gases into the atmosphere immediately before and during the extinction event that claimed Earth's non-avian dinosaurs
Duke University researchers have found hazardous levels of mercury hundreds of miles downstream from Peruvian gold mines. Researchers have determined that the health risks taken on by artisanal, small-scale gold miners extend far beyond the miners themselves. Based…
Eta Carinae, the most luminous and massive stellar system within 10 000 light-years of Earth, is known for its surprising behavior, erupting twice in the 19th century for reasons scientists still don't understand.A long-term study led by astronomers at NASA's Go
A bright light followed by a loud noise was recorded over Romanian sky at 01:05 UTC on January 7, 2015 (03:05 local time). The event was observed mainly in the southeastern area of the country and recorded by surveillance cameras in several cities.Based on the data corr
Penn State University astronomers are among the scientists of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) who this week are releasing to the public a massive collection of new information about the universe. "This set of observations is one of the largest astronomical data
Scientists are trying to determine why more than 100 000 (rough estimate) small seabirds called Cassin's auklets have washed up on the west coast of North America since October 2014, all the way from Haida Gwai, British Columbia, Canada to San Francisco, California,
While many astronomical collaborations use powerful telescopes to target individual objects in the distant universe, a new project at The Ohio State University is doing something radically different: using small telescopes to study a growing portion of the nearby univer
An experiment on bird migration patterns has inadvertently revealed that some bird species possess a unique ability to detect inclement weather hours or even days before it hits. Researchers from the Universities of Tennessee and Minnesota found that the golden-winged
Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest and biggest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy, known as Messier 31. The enormous image is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have caught the largest X-ray flare ever detected from what is believed to be a supermassive black hole at the center the Milky Way, also known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).The event was 400 times brighter than the us
