Cosmos Magazine

In a brief moment that its principal scientist Dante Lauretta described as “transcendental”, NASA’s OSIRISREx spacecraft successfully played tag with an asteroid on 21 October. The manoeuvre, officially called TAG (touch-and-go), saw the spacecraft t

It’s not yet a war of words, but an interesting debate is brewing over the origins of the first fossil feather ever found. Unearthed in the Solnhofen area of southern Germany in 1861, it has been taken to come from Archaeopteryx, the famous bird-like

A unique collaboration between physicists, data scientists and art historians has provided a fresh look at 500 years of art history. The international team statistically analysed 14,912 landscape paintings in an attempt to quantify their design princ

THE PRACTICE of photomicrography – literally, a picture of something under a microscope – isn’t restricted to images captured in science labs, but that’s where the majority of entries to the annual Nikon’s Small World competition come from. Small Wor

The megalodon (Otodus megalodon) has a longstanding reputation as one of the largest sharks to have roamed the oceans. US researchers have now confirmed this, suggesting it grew up to 15 metres in length. That’s on a par with the extant current recor

Arnhem Land rock art is continuing to provide a window into Australia’s past, with scientists describing 572 previously unknown images in a paper in the journal Australian Archaeology. The Maliwawa Figures, which range in age from 6000 to 9400 years,

Researchers at Australia’s RMIT University have developed prototype electronic artificial skin that senses and responds to pain just like human skin. It mimics the body’s near-instant feedback response, allowing it to react to painful sensations with

Earlier this year, while on a field trip in the Cocos Islands, I took some time out and went snorkelling. I was in a shallow channel between two islets, and the tide was running, so my only real option was to let the current carry me, which it did, a

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved sharks. By that I mean I’ve loved the idea of sharks, of course, having fallen victim to an older brother who (I can only presume) took much delight in showing me Jaws when I was far too young. In practice, I

In the spectacular, succulent-rich deserts of South Africa, a spiny socialite scampers across sandstone outcrops and mountain slopes. The armadillo girdled lizard (Ouroborus cataphractus) is rarely found without several of its family and friends, and

It’s risky business doing anything in space. It’s even riskier business scheduling a media interview to coincide with the assumed success of anything launched into space. On 25 May 2017, Elias Aboutanios – Associate Professor with the School of Elect

There are around 200 described species of Daphnia, usually known as water fleas because their method of swimming resembles the locomotion of a true flea. The planktonic crustaceans range in size from 0.2 to 5 millimetres, so you don’t expect to see t

IF HARRY PRICE was any more relaxed he’d grow icicles – not a bad look for a young man. From his native Townsville, Queensland, he cast his eye around at different universities in Australia – “to see what they were all doing; when you’re in Townsvill

Humans’ relationship with the ocean and its denizens is complex: exciting, and dangerous, seductive and confronting. To celebrate the Australian season of saltwater swimming, we’ve dived right in for a fisheye view. First among story equals, novelist

The idea that an entire island can disappear seems unbelievable, anathemic to our understanding of the natural world, even offensive to rational thinking. Something substantial and upstanding shouldn’t vanish in less time than it would once have take

How many first-edition copies of Isaac Newton’s ground-breaking book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica are still on bookshelves around the world? Probably more than you think, and certainly more than the last best guess. A census published

There are more than 1.8 billion trees and shrubs in the Sahara and Sahel regions of West Africa, a new study has revealed. While the overall tree cover is low, the researchers found that the number of individual trees is relatively high, and they hav

Fairy circles – regularly spaced, round patches of bare soil surrounded by grass – are one of nature’s greatest enigmas and most visually stunning phenomena. Now, an international team has collected data to show that a model proposed in 1952 by mathe

I’d like to introduce you to a technology system built on the Barwon River near the Queensland/ New South Wales border. It’s in the middle of the town of Brewarrina. Today, it’s an archaeological site. Nearly 400 metres long, it comprises a series of

Most of Vanuatu’s islands line up in three north-south trending rows. The row to the east is the oldest, a remnant group largely quiescent today. The centre row includes active volcanic islands, including still spluttering-and-shaking Ambae as well a

FOR MILLENNIA, HUMANITY’S relationship with the sea has been almost entirely with its surface and its edges. The coast is where we meet the forces, opportunities and vastness of the ocean, which – when its mood is right – lets us swim, sail, fish and

Climate scientists have compiled the first continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth’s climate extending back 66 million years to the time of the last great extinction. The global “reference curve” highlights four distinct climatic stat

IN A LABORATORY beneath the long wings of the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) in Hobart’s southern suburbs, krill biologist Rob King is lit by the glow of eight long tubes of radiant water. Each 120-litre tube, filled with billions of red or gree

Any more information will doubtless give it away. A number of these items – each of slightly different design – was developed in the 1970s, although their progenitors were being considered and tested in the early 1960s. In the late 1970s and early ’8

WALKING IS A WONDERFUL ACTIVITY. Sometimes we walk for practical reasons, to get from point A to point B, although if we’re constrained to footpaths we don’t often get to travel as the crow flies. The design of most city streets favours grid lines ra

EVER WONDERED WHY some animals walk or fly for miles in search of salt? Or what drove our ancestors to create better and better tools and learn to tame fire? Some of the most interesting stories of evolution, according to professor Rob Dunn from the

Astronomy is, perhaps, the science in which the border is most blurred between the “professional” and the “amateur”. The sky is open to everybody and, for centuries, the contribution of non-professional astronomers to the advancement of astronomy has

IN 1896, THERE WAS A GREAT CELEBRATION for the unveiling of West Australia’s weather observatory’s foundation stone in the Perth Park (now Kings Park and Botanic Garden). That year, Premier John Forrest said that the observatory: “... showed that in