In the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος (kosmos), meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the Latin loanword "Universe" (considered in its orderly aspect). The word cosmetics originates from the same root. In many Slavic languages such as Russian and Bulgarian, the word Космос cosmos means also the "outer space". In Mandarin Chinese, cosmos and universe are both translated as 宇宙 yuzhou, which literally translated means space-time (宇 yu = space + 宙 zhou = time).

Pythagoras is said to have been the first philosopher to apply the term cosmos to the Universe, perhaps referring to the starry firmament.

Russian cosmism is a cosmocentric philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century.

Cosmicism is a philosophical position that mankind is an insignificant aspect of a universe at best indifferent and perhaps hostile. This philosophy, explored by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft (who some say is the original proponent of the philosophy) and later writers who actually represented the beliefs in books such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third-party or mass audience.

One theory claims that the English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages – the Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the cognate Polish nowiny and Russian novosti – and in the Celtic languages: the Welsh newyddion (from newydd) and the Cornish nowodhow (from nowydh).

Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires.

The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.

Matias Zaldarriaga is an Argentine cosmologist. Born in Coghlan neighbourhood, Buenos Aires, at the present time he works in the Institute for Advanced Study located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. He is known especially for his work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Together with Uros Seljak, he developed the CMBFAST code, the first computationally efficient method for computing the anisotropy of the CMB for an arbitrary set of cosmological parameters. In 2003, he was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society, and in 2005 he won the Gribov Medal of the European Physical Society. In 2006, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Neil deGrasse Tyson ( /ˈniːəl dəˈɡræs ˈtaɪsən/ born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist and science communicator. He is currently the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Since 2006 he has hosted the educational science television show NOVA scienceNOW on PBS, and has been a frequent guest on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Jeopardy!. It was announced on August 5, 2011, that Tyson will be hosting a new sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage television series.

Tyson was born as the second of three children in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, but was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Sunchita Feliciano Tyson, was a gerontologist and his father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson, was a sociologist, human resource commissioner for the New York City mayor, John Lindsay, and was the first Director of HARYOU. Tyson attended the Bronx High School of Science (1972–1976, astrophysics emphasis) where he was captain of the wrestling team and was editor-in-chief of the school's Physical Science Journal. Tyson had an abiding interest in astronomy from the age of eleven, following his visit to the Hayden Planetarium at age nine. Tyson recalls that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." He obsessively studied astronomy in his teens, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen.