Astronomy continues to unlock the secrets of the universe, revealing stunning phenomena, reshaping our understanding of the cosmos, and sparking new questions for scientists to explore.
As we look ahead to 2025, Newsweek asked astronomers what discoveries they hope to see in the coming year. Here’s what they shared.
Wendy Freedman, John & Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The University of Chicago
I would love to see the discovery of dark matter. And to see if currently observed “cracks” in our standard model of cosmology hold up over time.
George Efstathiou, Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellow, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics, Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge
I would love to see evidence of supersymmetry from the Large Hadron Collider.
Newsweek asked astronomers what they hoped would be discovered in 2025.
Newsweek asked astronomers what they hoped would be discovered in 2025.
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images
Avi Loeb, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, Director, Institute for Theory & Computation, Harvard University
In 2025, the Rubin Observatory in Chile will start operations and survey the southern sky every four days with a 3.2 gigapixel camera.
I hope that it would discover more anomalous interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua’ from 2017, so that we could get enough data on them to infer if among the icy rocks there is technological space trash from extraterrestrial civilizations.
I discussed this hope in my recent book “Interstellar,” whose paperback edition was published in August 2024.
Martin Rees, Fellow, Trinity College, and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Cambridge; Astronomer Royal
We should remember that advances in astronomy depend not on armchair theory but on ever more sophisticated instruments—in particular, telescopes observing in all bandwidths from space.
In this context, we should surely acclaim the successful recent tests of the massive SpaceX Starship rocket. It can launch heavy cargo into space at far less expense than hitherto because even the huge first stage can be recovered and reused.
Indeed if Starship had been available when the James Webb telescope was being designed, the cost could have been cut by a factor of three.
This is because the less stringent weight limits would have allowed a more robust structure without the need for exotic materials—and, even more important, the 6.5 meter mirror could have been launched in one piece without the intricate and risky procedure that was actually involved in assembling it robotically from a mosaic of 18 separate bits of glass.
I’d also highlight that we can expect substantial advances in computer power and AI. Astronomy is a subject where we can’t do actually experiments—we can’t crash actual galaxies together or trigger stellar explosions.
A 3D illustration of the interstellar object known as Oumuamua. Originally classified as an asteroid, Oumuamua is an object estimated to be about 230 by 35 meters (800 ft x 100 ft) in size, travelling…
A 3D illustration of the interstellar object known as Oumuamua. Originally classified as an asteroid, Oumuamua is an object estimated to be about 230 by 35 meters (800 ft x 100 ft) in size, travelling through our solar system.
Aunt_Spray/iStock
But we can do this in the virtual universe in a computer. Many advances in our understanding in the last 20 years have come from increasingly intricate simulations: by doing these for sets of models making different assumptions (for example with and without dark matter) it’s been possible to see which fits the actual observations better.
We thereby already learned about why galaxies have their observed morphology; that there’s five times more mass in mysterious dark matter than in ‘ordinary’ atoms. We’re also learning how the huge black holes in their centers manifest themselves. Ever higher resolutions should be possible with more powerful computers.
We also need computers and AI to analyze vast datasets. Astronomy is no longer data-poor: the European Gaia satellite has measured the colors and motions of almost two billion stars in our galaxy; optical telescopes surveying the sky detect millions of galaxies.
To seek out subtle correlations from this database is plainly a task for AI. (And of course in our own solar system, robotic probes will be able to do better science, unaided by astronauts, when AI is more advanced).
And finally, being myself a theorist, I await the time when we’ll understand the exotic physics of the ultra-early universe, when gravity affects the microworld and space has extra dimensions.
It could be that computers will be able, through their speed, to solve mathematical challenges too daunting for any human—to test these theories.
What Astronomers Hope Is Discovered About Our Universe in 2025
