Unseasonal, severe thunderstorms ripped across the northern region of Israel to the Negev Desert in the south. Authorities reported an unusually high number of lightning strikes, hailstorms, and flooding. The Israel Corporation recorded 828 lightning strikes on…
The Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) dubbed the "murder hornet"– the world's largest wasp with an appetite for honeybees– has been spotted in the U.S. for the first time, particularly in Washington state. Entomologists are now on a hunt to wipe…
A shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M5.4 hit southern Puerto Rico at 11:13 UTC (07:13 LT) on May 2, 2020. The agency is reporting a depth of 9 km (5.6 miles). The quake occurred at Tallaboa, with extensive damage reported on the island, including…
Approaching Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) has become bright enough that it is already visible to the naked eye. As of 14:30 UTC on April 30, 2020, the comet is 115 million km (71 million miles) away from Earth, with a magnitude of 6.0. The comet appears like a bright fuzz…
A new study by an international team of geoscientists shows that a strange reversal of ground motion occurred prior to two of the biggest earthquakes in history– the M8.8 great Maule quake in 2010 and the M9 Tohoku-Oki quake in 2011, which triggered a catastrophic…
A tsunami up to 30 m (98 feet) could hit Hokkaido in northern Japan and Iwate in the northeast if an M9 quake occurs off the Pacific coast, a government panel warned Tuesday, April 21, 2020, based on a worst-case scenario, adding that a mega-earthquake centered…
A seismic swarm took place in the Campi Flegrei area near the Pisciarelli fumarole at the Solfatara crater in Italy, on Sunday night, April 26, 2020. It consisted of 34 tremors with magnitudes up to 3.1 and depths between 1 and 2 km (0.6 and 1.2 miles). The…
More than 100 000 people across Yemen have been affected by torrential rains and 'once-in-a-generation' flooding, the United Nations Office of the Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator reported on April 26, 2020. On March 25, destructive flash…
A large asteroid designated 1998 OR2 is expected to flyby Earth at 16.36 LD / 0.04205 AU (6.2 million km / 3.9 million miles) at 09:56 UTC on April 29, 2020. 1998 OR2 was discovered at Haleakala in Hawaii on July 24, 1998, by NASA and the Jet Propulsion…
A new study has identified the first known permanent set of asteroids originating from outside our solar system. These are believed to have been captured from other stars billions of years ago, orbiting the Sun in disguise ever since. The findings came more than two…
