Pure Science

Cosmos

A rendering of the Oxford University team’s ion trap chip. Credit: Dr Jochen Wolf and Dr Tom Harty. Physicists at the University of Oxford, UK have set a new world record for accurately controlling a single quantum bit as part of global...

Cosmos

The international space industry is on a growth trajectory, but new research shows a rapid increase in rocket launches would damage the ozone layer. Several hundred rockets are launched globally each year by a mix of commercial companies...

Cosmos

Russia launched its largest single drone attack of the war against Ukraine’s cities on June 1. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that they faced 472 unmanned one-way attack (OWA) drones overnight. The record may not stand for long. The...

Cosmos

We are taking a look back at stories from Cosmos Magazine in print. In March 2024, Astrophysicist Sara Webb reports on a galaxy-scale telescope revealing that the universe is awash with a low, constant hum of gravitational waves. In June...

Cosmos

Anthropologists have used enamel from 2-million-year-old teeth to determine the biological sex and genetic variability of ancient hominins in Africa. The new method will deepen anthropologists’ understanding of our early human ancestors...

Cosmos

Tribal warrior in Papua New Guinea. Credit: Tuul & Bruno Morandi / The Image Bank Unreleased / Getty Images Plus. Archaeologists have studied the genomes of 42 individuals spanning 2,500 years from Papua New Guinea and surrounding...

Cosmos

Retinol skincare products suddenly seem to be everywhere, promising clear, radiant and “youthful” skin. But what’s the science behind these claims? And are there any risks? You may have also heard retinol can increase your risk of sunburn...

Cosmos

An unlucky massive star approaches a supermassive black hole. Credit: University of Hawaiʻi. Astronomers have seen a rare, extremely energetic explosion when stars at least 3 times bigger than the Sun wandered too close to a supermassive...

Cosmos

Physicists are always searching for new theories to improve our understanding of the universe and resolve big unanswered questions. But there’s a problem. How do you search for undiscovered forces or particles when you don’t know what they...

Cosmos

Native Americans in northern Michigan were prolific farmers according to archaeological research published today in the journal Science. The findings show the high-level societal organisation that the ancestors of the indigenous people of...

Cosmos

Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the hands of Australian astronomers has led to the discovery of a unique gas in the atmosphere of exoplanet, WASP-121b. The exoplanet, also called “Tylos”, is a gas giant, a little bigger than...

Cosmos

Dead Sea Scrolls At Reagan Library Simi Valley, CA. Credit: Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepherds and archaeologists in the Qumran Caves in...

Cosmos

A fossil cast of a Diprotodon, a giant wombat at the Riversleigh fossil site in Queensland, Australia. Credit: David Clode on Unsplash. Megafauna once roamed across Australia with some species reaching massive sizes. But ancient bone...

Cosmos

Bougainville, an autonomous archipelago currently part of Papua New Guinea, is determined to become the world’s newest country. To support this process, it’s offering foreign investors access to a long-shuttered copper and gold mine....

Cosmos

According to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the latest emissions data show “we are on track to reach our 2030 targets” under the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were “27% below...

Cosmos

The nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, Andromeda, probably won’t collide with our home galaxy as previously predicted. Andromeda is also known as Messier 31, or M31, and about 2.5 million light-years from the Milky Way. Like our own...

Cosmos

A vaccine targeting gonorrhoea will soon be rolled out on the NHS. This will make England and Wales the first two countries in the world to offer such a programme. This move comes amid a sharp rise in gonorrhoea cases in England and...

Cosmos

Brian Schmidt was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics along with his colleagues for discovering that the universe’s expansion is picking up speed. Up to that point, cosmologists had assumed that the expansion of the universe would...

Cosmos

Archaeologists using new methods have unlocked more mysteries of ancient human development hidden under the surface in southern Africa. And it involves no digging. Southern Africa is a treasure trove of ancient human artefacts and fossils....

Cosmos

CHRISTCHURCH May 29:  Improving healthcare in the face of increasing demand means embracing digital twins and other technology, say Kiwi researchers. “Despite growing demand and abundant data from medical devices and systems,...

Cosmos

Scientists say chemistry practice and education will go through “a paradigm shift” following the signing of an international declaration in Sweden last week. The Stockholm Declaration on Chemistry for the Future, signed on May 23 at the...

Cosmos

Genomes from Yunnan in southwestern China, dating from 7,100 to 1,400 years ago, have been sequenced for the first time, revealing new insights about the links between different cultural groups from Tibet to South and Southeast Asia. The...

Cosmos

CHRISTCHURCH, May 29: AI is going underwater with the development by Kiwi engineers of a smart marine drone for the aquaculture industry.   “To enable the expansion of our aquaculture sector, we need this technology,” says project...

Cosmos

A clinical trial is set to explore the ancient Pacific tradition of kava drinking as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD affects nearly 4% of the global population at some point in their lives. Pacific island...

Cosmos

Large projectile point made of Gray Whale bone from the Duruthy rockshelter, Landes, France, dated between 18,000 and 17,500 years ago. Credit: Alexandre Lefebvre. Whale bones dating to 20,000 years ago found at sites around Spain could be...

Cosmos

Binary star system. Credit: NASA. Astronomers have discovered that binary pairs of stars orbiting each other closely can have unusually high levels of magnetic activity which in our star, the Sun, is responsible for sunspots and solar...

Cosmos

We are taking a look back at stories from Cosmos Magazine in print. This article appeared in December 2020. For maths YouTube sensation Toby Hendy, inspiration definitely exists, but it has to find you walking. Credit: Phil Constantinesco...

Cosmos

The global transition to green technologies has dramatically increased the demand for the lithium battery.  This critical mineral, abundant but distributed unevenly, is essential for energy storage and transport electrification. ...

Cosmos

Illustration of extracellular vesicles. Cross section shows surface receptors (blue) embedded in the membrane (purple) which surrounds the molecular cargo inside (blue and red). Credit: Juan Gaertner/Science Photo Library/Getty Images What...

Cosmos

Observation of 2 strong solar flares within 24 hours has led NASA to issue warnings that the intense eruptions on the Sun’s surface could cause problems on Earth. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare –...

Cosmos

US President Donald Trump announced a plan to build a missile defence system, called the Golden Dome, on May 20, 2025. The system is intended to protect the United States from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, and missiles...

Cosmos

You couldn’t get much more different than the dry, warm subtropical climate of Eswatini than the cold, wet southern island of New Zealand. PhD scholarship student Sebenele (Sebe) Thwala alongside her supervisor, Senior Lecturer in Applied...

Cosmos

“Genìa Da Vinci,” by Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato, is published by Angelo Pontecorboli Editors with the support of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and under the patronage of the Municipality of Vinci, as part of the “Leonardo DNA...

Cosmos

We are taking a look back at stories from Cosmos Magazine in print. This article appeared in March 2020. In south-western India, inside 600-year-old Gaden monastery, visiting academics Ilya Mandel and Leslie Atkins Elliott sought to...

Cosmos

Physicists have run their first experiment with ZEUS, the highest peak power laser in the USA, and among the most powerful in the world.  Potential breakthroughs in physics, medicine, and materials science beckon. The...

Cosmos

Aerial view of a mobile phone telecommunications tower at Goonellabah, NSW, Australia. Credit: davidf / E+ / Getty Images Plus. Wirelessly transmitted data using electromagnetic frequencies in the 5G band do not cause harmful effects such...

Cosmos

New hydrogen sensor. Credit: © 2025 KAUST. Researchers have invented a highly sensitive, low-cost device which has been shown to outperform existing commercial hydrogen detectors. Green hydrogen, which is made by electrolysing water using...

Cosmos

Dr Kiran Musunuru and Dr Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas with patient KJ. Credit: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia In a major step forward for gene editing, an infant’s rare genetic disorder has been successfully treated with a tailor-made gene...

Cosmos

Artist’s impression of a quantum simulation using a trapped ion computer. Credit: University of Sydney / sciencebrush.design. Researchers have used a quantum computer to simulate dynamic chemical processes of real molecules for the first...

Cosmos

A new genomics study has revealed that the longest migration of early humans was from Asia more than 100,000 years ago, covering more than 20,000km on foot. The researchers say understanding this migration and modern genetic diversity can...

Cosmos

Credit: Westend6/Getty Images Have you ever wondered why all pretty calico and tortoiseshell kitties are female, while ginger tabbies, like the lasagne-loving Garfield, are overwhelmingly male? Scientists have long suspected that the...

Cosmos

Chilean flamingo. Credit: Victor Ortega Jiménez, UC Berkeley Flamingos are known for posing serenely on one leg in extreme wetlands, placidly bobbing their heads into the shallow water to feed. But a new study has revealed there’s more...

Cosmos

Robots, autonomous vehicles and other next-generation technologies might have a human touch thanks to a new device which processes information like a brain. The device was designed by engineers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia....

Cosmos

One of the world’s largest cryogenic cooling plants will be built in Brisbane, Australia as part of constructing the first large-scale quantum computer. An agreement has been announced between the quantum computer builders, US company...

Cosmos

“When we talk about quantum computing, a lot of the time we focus on quantum hardware. My message is that quantum software and quantum algorithms are equally important.” This is the message of Dr Muhammad Usman, head of quantum systems at...

Cosmos

Astronomers have managed to peer inside a nearby star by “listening” to its resonance. What they discovered changes astronomers’ understanding of how stars work. Stars don’t make a noise that you can hear, but they do have natural resonant...

Cosmos

Seismologists in Australia have detected signals which travelled through the Earth’s core from strong winter storms in the North Atlantic Ocean. They say their data could help future space exploration missions. 3D render of 2022 Category...

Cosmos

Credit: EyeEm Mobile GmbH/Getty Images New research which “observed” sound has revealed the intriguing physics behind one of orchestras’ simplest instrument – the triangle. Made of a single metal rod bent into the shape of a triangle with...

Cosmos

The self-oscillating limbs synchronise to freestyle swimming. Credit: AMOLF/Alberto Comoretto Researchers have created a soft robot that walks, hops, and swims using legs that resemble inflatable, wavey air dancers which grab customers’...

Cosmos

A sponge-like device produced by engineers in Australia and China can capture water from thin air. The researchers say it could be used in arid regions of the world to collect water. A device, described in a paper published in the Journal...