Top 5 astounding astronomical discoveries in 2025.

As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at the year and, in the world of science, at the findings that have kept the world on its toes.

- SHAMIM HAQUE MONDAL

Space aficionados, in particular, have had a thrilling time.For ages, astronomers have been hunting for exoplanets, uncovering massive cosmic formations like Quipu, and glimpsing the Alaknanda in the James Webb Space Telescope's mirror (a galaxy similar to the Milky Way). They've also tracked a parade of comets, from Lemon to 3I/ATLAS and beyond. Meanwhile, a single, persistent worry loomed—an asteroid impact! Here are five of the year's most intriguing discoveries.

1. Quipu the largest superstructure:

"This year, a paper entitled "Unveiling the Largest Structure..." was published in the journal ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics' and has created a stir in the world of astronomy. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extra-Terrestrial Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Physics have discovered the largest structure in the universe, 'Quipu.' The supermassive structure of about 200 quadrillion solar masses (1 solar mass = 1988416 < 1030 kg) was detected during the mapping of the nearby universe with the help of the ROSAT X-ray satellite. The size and mass of this object are incomprehensible; it occupies 428 megaparsecs (1'megaparsec’ = 32.6 light years) of space, and light takes thirteen million years to pass through it, according to scientific estimates.

Max Planck's scientist, Hans Boehringer, and his colleagues named the structure Quipu. Why such a strange name? The Inca civilization of Central America had the practice of knotted ropes in the counting system. Boehringer saw the ropes at a museum near Santiago, Chile, while working at the European Southern Observatory. That's why the name. Another reason is that the distances of most galaxy clusters were measured at the Southern Observatory of Chile. Basically, a thick rope is tied with several thin ropes around it in the form of a ‘Quipu,’ just like in the ancient Inca script.