Jasmine Fellows
Jasmine is the Editor of Cosmos Magazine. Here she explores content you might have missed.
“What does the future hold?” The more we know, the better our decision-making. For 2025, science is forecasting a quantum leap, a revolution in artificial intelligence and intensified climate concerns.
Time to gaze into the crystal ball. Here are just a handful of predictions for the year ahead, as featured in Cosmos Magazine.
The quantum leap
We’re heading into 2025, the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. We’re predicting that everyday people will have the opportunity to better grasp what quantum technologies are, and how they will affect our day-to-day lives.
It will bring answers to questions like: What’s it going to mean when I go to the doctor? Or when I do my internet banking?
When it comes to going to the doctor, quantum can offer significant practical advantages, such as enabling smaller and more portable devices for medical diagnostics.
On the internet banking front, it’s possible quantum computers could pose a threat to the security of digital information and communications. However, quantum could also provide the next generation of secure communications technologies.
One feature of quantum physics is a property known as entanglement, where the laws of physics guarantee the safety of shared data. Quantum communications based on entangled states ensure that attempts to intercept or eavesdrop on a signal will destroy the information. So, any attempt to hack a quantum communication channel will be pointless and immediately detected.
And that’s just the start, 2025 will bring plenty of additional opportunities to hear about quantum technologies that could augment our lives.
Read the full article, ‘Our quantum future‘ by Chris Vale, with your subscription to Cosmos magazine.
Predicting the timeline with AI
At the heart of predicting the future is the time series. Humans have always been students of time series, as we learned to trace and predict the paths of the planets across the skies long before we developed writing or mathematics.
In essence, a time series is a collection of observations. It is data collected through repeated measurements over time.
Today we know that time series allow us to make predictions about any observable process. They’re universal.
A ‘universal time-series transformer’, applies cutting-edge developments in artificial intelligence to the physical world, promising a revolution in predictive capabilities.
Nothing remains static as the universe flows, changes and evolves over time, and for that reason nearly every physical process can be represented in time series. This makes processes visible – and mathematically manipulable.
Universal time-series transformer models will be incredibly practical. Scientist Salesforce AI Research, Caiming Xiong, points to an example we’re all familiar with.
“Every month I open my bank account, and the bank will be able to say, ‘I predict you will spend how much money in the next month.’ So I can use that information on how I can save and spend.”
Universal time series transformers could soon be embedded in a very broad range of software, giving software unprecedented capabilities to help predict – and plan for the future.
“We’ll have a new role coming up in the next few years,” Salesforce’s Doyen Sahoo reckons. “Working within organisations, helping them get the most from universal time-series transformers: Time Series Scientist.” Will it be as soon as 2025?
Subscribe to Cosmos magazine, to receive our March issue featuring the article ‘Prediction engine’ by our futurologist Mark Pesce.
Future climate
From modest beginnings, weather and climate models have come to dominate our days.
Climate is an area where predictions are more important than ever, with scientists continuing to predict catastrophic and irreversible change.
In 2023 the global average temperature soared to almost 1.5°C above the preindustrial level, setting several new records. And deeply concerning atmospheric scientists.
So, the planet may exceed the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target sooner than forecast. It’s possible the global temperature could temporarily exceed the 1.5°C warming threshold in 2025.
That means there are some important things to know about climate models. Including that they’re not perfect.
“We’re never going to have a perfect model; our models are always going to be wrong,” Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Cosmos in 2024.
“But they are demonstrably useful. It’s kind of incredible: even though they are imperfect, incomplete and still have bugs in them, they nonetheless make useful, good predictions. And those predictions have been getting better over time.”
To find out more about climate modelling, read ‘Predicting the future‘ by Drew Rooke, with your subscription to Cosmos Magazine.
