Cosmos and Visions of Light
Issue 93 February 2026
Cosmological Perspectives
Ione Parkin RWA is an abstract painter, co-lead artist on the Creativity and Curiosity project and an Honorary Visiting Fellow of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester. She is the curator of the exhibition ‘Cosmos: the art of observing Space’ currently showing at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol (24th January-19th April 2026.
Visions of Light
Chris Wood is a UK based artist with a career spanning over 25 years. Known for her signature light-responsive artworks and transformative installations, Wood has garnered global acclaim, culminating in the establishment of the Chris Wood Light Studio , est. 2015.
Wood’s creative practice utilises optical materials to harness light and suggest ephemeral glimpsed moments in the natural world. Her meticulous pattern work and mathematical arrangements order the accidental and transform light into spectacular displays of vibrant colour.
A Geometric Universe
Primarily working with wood, Ben Rowe creates intriguing objects that draw the viewer into fascinating new worlds. Using geometrical shapes and mathematical laws applied in science and nature, he plays with notions of scale. Pulling down macro-objects such as asteroids and planets and blowing up micro-organisms, molecules and atoms, showing us their often overlooked, complex structures and frameworks, reflecting them back to us
Earth, A Cosmic Spectacle
Louise Beer is an artist and curator, born in Aotearoa New Zealand, now working England. Louise uses installation, moving image, photography, writing, participatory works and sound to explore humanity’s evolving understanding of Earth’s environments and the cosmos. Her experience of living under two types of night sky, the first in low level light polluted areas in Aotearoa, and the second in higher level light polluted cities and towns in England, has deeply informed her practice. She explores how living under dark skies, or light polluted skies, can change our perception of grief, the climate crisis and Earth’s deep time history and future.
Revealing the Unseen
Susan Eyre is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video, installation and print processes, creating work to encourage a sense of wonder in the everyday and an awareness of an entangled universe. She explores cosmological and geological phenomena with a particular fascination for cosmic rays and magnetic fields. Employing simple technology to assist in revealing the unseen and extending the boundaries of human sensory perception, her work brings the viewer into tangible contact with invisible natural forces, embracing the unfathomable by appealing to human scale and presence.
Droplets of Cosmic Light
Geraldine Cox’s work is about finding resonant ways to express hidden aspects of nature and the journey of discovery. This research has taken her to the heart of the atom, the beginnings of the Universe and the essence of light. In 2020, she won the prestigious American Institute of Physics Gemant Award for ‘Physics Through Art’.
Polar Light
Steve Giovinco is a New York-based photographer and a Yale MFA graduate. His night photographs at the edge of inhabited places trace evidence of epic but subtle change. Informed by the environment, history, and culture, his most recent work documents the extremely remote arctic Greenland with the goal of visualizing transformation since climate-related statistics can be difficult to grasp. His work is held in numerous public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the California Museum of Photography.
Passage
Siobhan McDonald’s multifaceted exhibition PASSAGE explores Dublin’s deep history as a mutable landscape shaped by water, cosmology, and human intervention. Through film, sound, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition investigates how the city’s shifting ground holds memory and resilience.
Information could be a fundamental part of the universe – and may explain dark energy and dark matter
Florian Neukart is Assistant Professor of Physics, Leiden University. He is widely recognized as a leading figure in high technology, innovation, and future tech. With extensive experience in academia, industry, and consulting, he has established himself as a trusted advisor and practitioner in artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Currently serving as the Executive Board Member for Product at Terra Quantum AG, as the Director for Exponential Technologies at the Quantum Economy Institute, and on Board of Trustees of the International Foundation of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing, Florian also holds a special advisory role at the Quantum Strategy Institute and serves on the Board of Advisors of KI Park. He has contributed significantly to shaping Germany’s approach to quantum computing as a co-author of the National Roadmap for Quantum Computing and sits on the Advisory Board of Quantum.Tech. Florian’s expertise has also been sought after on the global stage, as evidenced by his membership in the World Economic Forum’s Future Council on Quantum Computing.
Puzzling slow radio pulses are coming from space. A new study could finally explain them
Csanád Horváth
“I am a radio astronomy PhD student at Curtin University in Western Australia. I study the recently discovered long-period radio transients; minute-to-hour period radio pulses which weren’t thought to exist before 2022.”
Natasha Hurley-Walker
“I am an Associate Professor at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. I received my PhD in Radio Astronomy from the University of Cambridge in 2010 and have led several large-area radio sky surveys with the Murchison Widefield Array, exploring a wide range of science topics including supernova remnants, galaxy clusters, radio galaxy life cycles, and transient astronomy. You can find out more about my outreach activities, awards, and media via my website.”
What’s the shape of the universe? Mathematicians use topology to study the shape of the world and everything in it
John Etnyre is currently a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“I received my PhD from the University of Texas and then spent several years at Stanford with an NSF postdoctoral fellowship. The next stop was the University of Pennsylvania where, after four years, I became an Associate Professor and then moved to Georgia Tech.”
Wormholes may not exist – we’ve found they reveal something deeper about time and the universe
Enrique Gaztanaga is Professor of Astrophysics at Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth.
“I also have a civil servant (on leave) appointment as Research Professor in the Institute of Space Studies (ICE) working for the Spanish National Research Council (www.csic.es) and the IEEC in Barcelona. My background is in Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology. My expertise is in the area of theoretical models of Cosmology and the building and analysis of the largest Cosmic maps. I am currently director of the PAU Survey (pausurvey.org) and the Science Coordinator of ESA ARRAKIHS (arrakihs-mission.eu) space mission. ”
Why did life evolve to be so colourful? Research is starting to give us some answers
Jonathan Goldenberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Biology, Lund University. He is an evolutionary biologist specializing in the dynamics of species evolution under changing environmental conditions. His research primarily investigates the function and evolution of colored integuments in animals. He integrates fieldwork, literature analysis, and museum collections with computer vision, biophysical models, spatial analyses, and phylogenetic comparative methods to examine how species respond to shifting environments at local and global scales, from past to present and into the future.