Cosmos Magazine

WE LIVE IN A TIME DEFINED BY CHANGE, when things very rarely turn out in the way we expect. The world is full of variables, and often directions switch, paths diverge and even the limits of what is possible – and what is normal – shift. This issue –

DANIELLE FUTSELAAR AND NATHALIE DEGENAAR, UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM ■

SPACE IN A WORLD FIRST, astronomers have measured the speed of a neutron star's powerful jets. Turns out these energetic beams of energy and matter travel at 114,000 km per second – or about one third of the speed of light. Neutron stars are among th

ONE OF THE most significant challenges in treating HIV is the virus' ability to integrate its genome into the host's DNA. This means that lifelong antiretroviral therapy is essential, as latent HIV can reactivate from reservoirs as soon as treatment

SCIENTISTS ARE GOING to extreme lengths – and places – to try and understand the fundamental nature of the universe. “Today, classical physics describes the phenomena in our normal surroundings such as gravity, while the atomic world can only be desc

WHAT'S BELIEVED TO be the first evidence of pottery making by Australia's First Nations people has been unearthed at Jiigurru (Lizard Island) on the Great Barrier Reef. Small sherds – fragments of ceramic material – were uncovered in an archaeologica

A STONE-AGE skeleton found in a Danish peat bog has been analysed, fleshing out the ancient person's life and death in stunning detail. Nicknamed Vittrup Man, this individual died between 3300 and 3100 BCE, aged 30–40 years old. He is named for the s

A GIANT VOLCANO has been hiding on the surface of Mars. It measures 9022 metres high and 450 kilometres wide, making it nearly 200 metres taller than Mt Everest. And yet scientists have only just identified the behemoth, as well as possible glacier i

1 Fossilised dinosaur footprints, plants and tree stumps in Alaska's far northwest reveal the area was a lush, warm riverine setting 100 million years ago. 2 An ancient amphibian ancestor found in Texas has been named Kermitops gratus in honour of ic

Let's move away from our regular focus on gadgets and devices to present these oddities. The one in the centre is the original; the others are casts. No more hints needed – the objects themselves contain all the info you need, if you know what you're

BACK IN FEBRUARY, Museums Victoria debunked long-circulating claims that the southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons) can run at speeds of 40km/h. (For context, this almost pips Usain Bolt's 43.99km/h world record for the 100-metre dash.)

A GALAXY 12 MILLION light-years from Earth is brimming with new stars, NASA scientists have found. Pointing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at a patch of space in the constellation Ursa Major, they discovered a galaxy where new stars are bloomi

RESEARCHERS HAVE witnessed a new phenomenon in the brain as humans store memories, shedding light on the how the brain coordinates its many regions and billions of neurons. The team recorded participants' brain activity while they performed tasks tha

IT'S BEEN 18 MONTHS since I climbed the biggest blue gum in the universe in the Grove of Giants in southern lutruwita/Tasmania. My arboreal journey into Lathamus Keep was made possible by canopy scientist Jen Sanger, photographer Steve Pearce and the

When I was doing my PhD, there was no such thing as a lithium-ion battery. The first was commercialised in 1992, and for the next two decades or so, it was all about lithium. My work was always parallel to that. For the last 30 years I've been invest

On 5 June 1981, the US Center for Disease Control published an article in its regular newsletter, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, which described a strange cluster of sudden cases of pneumonia in Los Angeles. All of the patients were young gay men wh

“Western technological societies continue to fail biodiversity,” Stephen Hopper tells me bluntly. A world-renowned ecologist and professor of biodiversity at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Hopper believes that Indigenous land management p

A 2023 poll to decide the most famous opening line of a book yielded “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, the first words of Charles Dickens' Victorian blockbuster A Tale of Two Cities. Set in London and Paris during the French Revo

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (c) – but this maximum speed only occurs in a perfect vacuum. Light travels slower through other mediums; in our atmosphere, for example, it travels at about 99.97% of c. So when a high-energy gamma r

CTAO will be the world's largest and most sensitive observatory for gamma-ray astronomy, 10 times more sensitive than any existing instrument. Between three classes of telescopes – each using segmented mirrors to reflect Cherenkov radiation into high

What the hell? There was no other way to react to the bizarre headlines that dropped in November last year. “Tour de France rider tried to obtain marine worm haemoglobin for blood doping boost,” read Cycling News. “I never thought the next breakthrou

In the physical realm, Tuvalu is under threat. The Pacific nation, made up of nine atolls dotting a 676-kilometre stretch of ocean midway between Hawai'i and Australia, is one of the lowest-lying countries in the world – its highest point peaks just

When she first arrived in the West Australian Kimberley six years ago, Sara Cavalcanti Marques felt a strong a.nity with the region. This vast area of dramatic and relatively undisturbed landscapes, cut by pristine rivers, forms a haven for rare plan

For as long as humans have gazed up into the night sky, our closest celestial neighbour – the Moon – has peered back. So, while Neil Armstrong may have been the first man to step foot on it, cultures have been telling stories about the “man in the Mo

Send us a pic of where you're reading Cosmos to win a limited edition notebook. On an early train to uni in her first year, Lana Hughes of Kyneton, Victoria, cracks open the latest copy of Cosmos. “Since I'm up to date with all my homework, I'm looki

In a world inundated by complex global challenges and new technology, innovative solutions are no longer born out of traditional research silos. Instead, they emerge from the fusion of diverse disciplines that ignites innovation and drives significan

Dr Katrina Wruck, industrial chemist and proud Mabuigilaig and Goemulgal woman, is revolutionising the field of environmental chemistry and standing out as a beacon of hope for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who often mistakenly b