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news features opinion fiction reviews gadgets media room Free sample! Read a complete digital edition of COSMOS now. View sample	Online news Thursday, 24 July 2008 Mars baked from different ingredients to Earth Mars grew out of gas and dust of a very different composition to Earth, says a new study. The research is another piece in the puzzle towards understanding how the planets formed from the disc of matter that was the early Solar System. read more Dino diversity had a long pedigree The belief that dinosaurs underwent explosive species diversification shortly before they were wiped out is an illusion, for the beasts' main evolutionary shifts took place millions of years before. read more Other news High risk of 'mega-disasters' in Asia-Pacific Baby's smile: drug-like high for mothers Vaccine enhances cancer immune response Threatened devils have more sex Undersea volcanoes triggered mass extinction Loud bar music makes people drink more View all news COSMOS magazine: current issue On sale in newsstands now! COSMIC ROULETTE Will the world's most expensive experiment finally solve the riddle of matter? Physicists around the world are staking the lot on the Large Hadron Collider. In this issue of Cosmos, Peter Calamai reviews the odds of success. Also in this issue: Time - it can fly or it can crawl, but is it real or just an illusion? Mind maps - advances in brain scanning are allowing psychiatrists to move from cautiously diagnosing symptoms to actually seeing the underlying malfunctions of the mind. Looking to the skies - where physics and philosophy (and even theology) intersect is where Paul Davies feels most at home. What makes us human - what is it that sets us apart from other animals? Subscribe now to Cosmos magazine! View the full contents Online features Mapping the evolution of the cosmos by staff writers \| A new telescope in the Australian outback, promises to answer big questions about the history and fate of the cosmos. By focusing on distant objects, it will peer back in time, almost to the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. read more Who’s afraid of the big bad toad? by Rick Shine \| A new arsenal of weapons, such as toad-specific parasites and pheromones is giving a glimmer of hope in the toad wars. read more Read more features Selected COSMOS magazine features Silent spring by Lauren Monaghan \| Deep in the radioactive bowels of the smashed Chernobyl reactor, a strange new lifeform is blooming. read more The coming famine by Julian Cribb \| What's even scarier than global warming? Julian Cribb argues that feeding the global appetite in an overpopulated, affluent and resource-scarce world could be the scientific challenge of the era. read more Read more features Fiction For the Love of Jazz Seeing nearly three metres of multi-jointed legs and squat metal body towering in front of him, Holden wondered if a lion might not be preferable. read more Wormwords If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, how many bits does it take to remake a man? read more Read more fiction Reviews Déjà Vu Here’s a thriller that combines the trademark pace of Jerry Bruckheimer, the gritty realism of director Tony Scott and the vulnerable action hero leading man that Denzel Washington reliably conjures up on such occasions. And then there’s the time travel. read more The Universe: A Biography The story begins 14 billion years ago. Somewhere in a vacuum (one school of thought would have it), a quantum ripple upset the apple cart and – BAM! One-ten-thousand-billionth of a second later a ball of pure energy, 10²⁹ degrees Kelvin, begins its inevitable task, as described by the Standard Model of particle physics, of creating the universe. read more Read more reviews	Vote for us! Please vote for 'G and COSMOS Magazine' in the City of Sydney Small Business Awards! COSMOS newsletter! Sign up to the COSMOS newsletter Enter your email address Receive regular updates highlighting the latest in science from COSMOS. Unscientific poll Do you think loud music in bars and pubs makes you drink more? : Yes - It's a clever ploy to extract more of my money. Maybe - But I probably just go to louder bars when I'm going to drink more anyway. No - I don't think I'm that easily swayed!