v1.0.0

Cosmogon 1.0.0 — "The whole universe"

A free, open-source universe sandbox: throw planets and black holes, watch stars live and die,
pull back from a city street to the cosmic web — and see what happens to the people.

Downloads

Platform	File	Notes
macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon & Intel)	Cosmogon-1.0.0-macOS.dmg	Open, drag Cosmogon to Applications.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	Cosmogon-1.0.0-Windows-Setup.exe	Installer with Start-menu shortcut.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	Cosmogon-1.0.0-Windows.exe	Portable: just run it.
Linux x86-64	Cosmogon-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	Extract and run cosmogon.

Nothing else needs to be installed. A GPU with Metal, Vulkan or DirectX 12 is required.

First launch (unsigned builds)

These builds are not signed with paid Apple/Microsoft certificates, so the operating system
warns the first time:

• macOS: right-click Cosmogon → Open → Open. If macOS says the app "is damaged",
  run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cosmogon.app in Terminal once.
  On macOS 15+, you may instead need System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
• Windows: SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway.

What's new

Start with the tour. Four guided tours — from Earth to the cosmic web, a black hole passing
through, the death of the Sun, Halley's Comet — show you around in a few minutes.

Throw anything. Pick Throw, choose a planet, a comet, a star or a black hole from the shelf and
drag to fling it, with the trajectory drawn live. Click without dragging for a circular orbit.
Grab moves things. Collisions shatter worlds after real disruption scaling: debris, molten
surfaces, boiling oceans, a flash and a shock ring racing over the ground. Moons that stray inside
the Roche limit become rings.

Stars live and die. Red giants swell and swallow their inner planets; dying stars leave
planetary nebulae and white dwarfs, or explode as supernovae and leave neutron stars and black
holes — whose radiation crosses the galaxy at light speed. New stars are born in nurseries like the
real Orion Nebula.

Black holes that bend light. Ray-traced lensing, the photon ring and blazing accretion disks;
pulsars sweep their beams.

The whole universe. Pull back from the Sun and the camera swings to the Galactic Centre: the
Milky Way's bar and arms, the Magellanic Clouds, Andromeda, and beyond them thousands of galaxies and
quasars along the cosmic web.

Civilizations beyond their world. Dyson swarms that harvest a star, terraformed planets,
generation ships that found new branches of a civilization around other stars.

Comets. Halley's Comet on its real orbit; every comet grows a blue ion tail pointing away from
the Sun and a curved dust tail.

A new interface. Icons, a cleaner universe tree, a timeline you can rewind (click a snapshot),
photo mode (P) for clean screenshots, and a synthesised soundtrack with impact rumbles and supernova
roars.

Full details: CHANGELOG.md and docs/PRODUCT_PLAN_1_0.md.

v0.5.0

Cosmogon 0.4.0 — "Sandbox Foundation"

A free, open-source simulator of a living universe: stars, planets, life and civilizations
that discover technology through causes rather than timers.

Downloads

Platform	File	Notes
macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon & Intel)	Cosmogon-0.4.0-macOS.dmg	Open, drag Cosmogon to Applications.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	Cosmogon-0.4.0-Windows-Setup.exe	Installer with Start-menu shortcut.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	Cosmogon-0.4.0-Windows.exe	Portable: just run it.
Linux x86-64	Cosmogon-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	Extract and run cosmogon.

Nothing else needs to be installed. A GPU with Metal, Vulkan or DirectX 12 is required.

First launch (unsigned builds)

These builds are not signed with paid Apple/Microsoft certificates, so the operating system
warns the first time:

• macOS: right-click Cosmogon → Open → Open. If macOS says the app "is damaged",
  run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cosmogon.app in Terminal once.
  On macOS 15+, you may instead need System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
• Windows: SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway.

What's new

• A universe sandbox. A new home screen with New Sandbox (seven templates), Continue, Load,
  Real Universe and Scenarios. Every experiment is saved in its own folder with autosave,
  checkpoints, duplicates and thumbnails.
• The real Solar System, today. The Solar System Lab starts from NASA/JPL Horizons positions
  and velocities for 1 January 2026. Run it for a year and the planets land within kilometres of
  where JPL says they will be.
• Real gravity. Dynamic N-body physics: add a planet and every other planet feels it.
  Collisions merge bodies; close encounters are integrated accurately; presets from Fast to Research.
• Create and launch. Add planets, moons, giants, dwarf planets, asteroids and comets; throw
  them at a target and see the predicted path — and any impact — before you release.
• Edit anything, undo anything. Mass, radius, gravity, day length, tilt, orbit, atmosphere,
  water, the Sun's mass and age — in your choice of units, with every value labelled MEASURED,
  DERIVED, ESTIMATED, PROCEDURAL or USER MODIFIED.
• Consequences. Move a planet or change the Sun and its climate, habitability and
  civilizations respond. Impacts leave craters, cause impact winters and mass extinctions.
• Scenarios. No Moon · 2× Jupiter · a brighter Sun · Chicxulub today · a rogue planet ·
  two moons · Mars with Earth's air.

v0.3.0

Cosmogon 0.3.0 — "Living worlds, rival nations"

A free, open-source simulator of a living universe: stars, planets, life and civilizations
that discover technology through causes rather than timers.

Downloads

Platform	File	Notes
macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon & Intel)	Cosmogon-0.3.0-macOS.dmg	Open, drag Cosmogon to Applications.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	Cosmogon-0.3.0-Windows-Setup.exe	Installer with Start-menu shortcut.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	Cosmogon-0.3.0-Windows.exe	Portable: just run it.
Linux x86-64	Cosmogon-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	Extract and run cosmogon.

Nothing else needs to be installed. A GPU with Metal, Vulkan or DirectX 12 is required.

First launch (unsigned builds)

These builds are not signed with paid Apple/Microsoft certificates, so the operating system
warns the first time:

• macOS: right-click Cosmogon → Open → Open. If macOS says the app "is damaged",
  run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cosmogon.app in Terminal once.
  On macOS 15+, you may instead need System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
• Windows: SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway.

What's new

• Real Earth. The Sol scenario uses NOAA ETOPO5 relief: real continents, mountains and sea
  floors. Humanity begins in East Africa and spreads by walking, rafts and ships.
• Rival nations. Chiefdoms, kingdoms, empires, republics and federations form from
  geography, fight border wars, capture cities, unite, fracture in civil wars — and may, rarely,
  become a world government. Territories are coloured on the map.
• Close-up terrain. Fly down to a few hundred metres above any rocky world: a level-of-detail
  quadtree of real 3D relief with mountain ranges, crater fields on airless worlds and haze.
• Geological speed with civilizations. Societies are simulated at the level of detail they
  need, so millions of years per second stay possible after intelligence appears.
• Same universe everywhere. A seed now produces bit-identical results on every computer and
  operating system (verified in CI on macOS, Windows and Linux).
• Fixes: airless worlds were drawn black; Mars and other dry worlds were drawn as ice.