What is happening to our food? And what is it that's zooming past us at record speed? No, it's not astronaut Jannicke Mikkelsen – although she also spent time in space this year.
The editorial team at forskning.no/Science Norway has selected breakthroughs and major topics that shaped 2025. Here are nine of the year's highlights in research and science.
Vaccines can help against more than the disease they were created for.(Foto: Heiko Junge / NTB)
Vaccines turned out to protect against more than infectious diseases
Certain vaccines appear to work against dementia and give cancer patients better prognoses.
In 2025 came the news that a vaccine will likely be able to reduce the risk of dementia.
According to a study, the shingles vaccine seems to have this effect. Vaccinated people had about a 20 per cent lower risk of developing dementia than those who were not vaccinated.
Other vaccines also showed unexpected benefits in 2025. In November, forskning.no wrote about a study showing that cancer patients who received a Covid-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting cancer treatment had a much better prognosis.
"We know that strengthening the immune system in different ways can have an effect on cancer, especially with modern immunotherapy," said oncologist Odd Terje Brustugun (link in Norwegian).
Immunologist Gunnveig Grødeland says that she is not familiar with the cancer study, but that the research showing reduced dementia risk after vaccination against shingles, also called herpes zoster, is a very exciting finding.
However, she emphasises that it still needs to be confirmed whether the same applies to the vaccine used in Norway.
"The vaccine we use here is a protein vaccine. It may affect dementia risk differently than the live virus vaccine used in the study. A live vaccine triggers a much broader immune response. More studies are needed before drawing conclusions," she believes.
Grødeland explains that the flu vaccine also works against more than just influenza. Among the elderly and risk groups, the vaccine reduces the risk of stroke. The same effect has been seen after vaccination against SARS- CoV-2.
"The effect is probably tied to a general reduction of inflammation rather than one specific vaccine," she thinks.
What does ultra-processed food actually do to our bodies?(Foto: P Maxwell Photography/Shutterstock/NTB)
Rising scepticism towards ultra-processed foods
In 2025, the term ultra-processed foods truly became mainstream – among both the public and researchers.
Throughout the year, numerous new studies linked ultra-processed foods to obesity and disease.
In June, for example, a study from eight countries showed that the risk of early death increased the more ultra-processed foods people had in their diet.
In August came the results of a British experiment: People consumed more calories and weighed more when they had an ultra-processed diet than when they ate minimally processed food, even when both diets followed dietary guidelines.
In November, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published a series of articles that attracted international attention. The researchers' summary confirmed the link between an ultra-processed diet and major health problems. They proposed international measures to limit production and consumption, and the journal concluded: it's time to put health before profit.
Meanwhile, 2025 was also the year of major disagreements about ultra-processed foods in Norway.
Critics argued that the concept and classification systems are imprecise. The categories do not always show a clear distinction between healthy and unhealthy food, meaning whole-grain bread and tinned fish could end up in the wrong group.
Annonse
Internationally, more controversy followed. Kevin Hall – a leading researcher in the field – published a study rejecting claims that ultra-processed food is addictive like drugs. He claimed US health authorities tried to prevent him from sharing his findings because they clashed with the MAHA movement's stance. In the end, Hall chose to leave his position at the National Institutes of Health.
Major breakthrough on dark energy
In March came a major news story in astrophysics.
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) had created the largest 3D map of the universe to date.
Researchers used the data to study the role of dark energy.
Dark energy has been thought of as a constant energy that fills space and can explain why the universe is expanding faster. But the new findings, combined with other datasets, suggested that dark energy may actually have weakened – and that the universe may have been expanding faster in the past.
"What the DESI results indicate is that the cosmological constant may not actually be constant. There seems to be something dynamic going on," Hans Arnold Winther told forskning.no (link in Norwegian).
He is an associate professor at the University of Oslo's Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics.
Researchers still do not agree on how to interpret the discovery, but it appears that the leading model of the universe's evolution is not complete.
"This result adds to a growing list of recent evidence suggesting cracks in the standard model of cosmology," said Winther.
Plastic, waste, in, lake. Ocean, pollution, marine, debris. Marine, litter.Copyright (c) 2024 Maksim Safaniuk/Shutterstock. No use without permission.
Plastic gone astray, also in our bodies
This year was also the year when awareness around plastic surged.
In recent years, microplastics have been detected in nearly every part of the human body.
Research shows there may be over 16,000 different chemicals in plastic products. More than 4,000 of them are harmful to health or the environment – and for about 10,000 substances, we still lack sufficient knowledge.
In February, international researchers warned that a number of childhood illnesses may be linked to synthetic chemicals. The researchers believe legislation must be updated and the chemical industry reorganised.
In July, it became known that a chemical used in plastic may have contributed to over several hundred thousand deaths worldwide. Researchers linked a phthalate called DEHP to heart-related deaths. It has also been associated with breast cancer and diabetes – and is used in items such as food packaging and medical equipment.
"Microplastics are everywhere. They can be in the air, in kettles people have used, in the water, in teabags. It's not necessarily just the container it comes from – it may also come from processes that happened before it reached the cup or bottle," plastic researcher Vilde Snekkevik at NIVA told forskning.no in August (link in Norwegian).
Despite being bombarded with warnings against plastic: Negotiations for a legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution stalled in Geneva in September. There was no global plastic treaty.
Researchers are nevertheless looking for solutions. Such as plastic in ropes and fishing gear possibly being replaced with better alternatives. And an American study suggests that regulating the use of plastic bags results in less plastic pollution.
This image, provided by NASA, shows the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on Nov. 30, 2025, about 178 million miles (286 million kilometers) from Earth. (NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory), J. DePasquale (STScI) via AP)AP / NTB
We received a visit from another solar system
An object in space has received a lot of attention this year.
The object racing past us at around 210,000 kilometres per hour may be far older than our solar system.
The comet has been named 3I/ATLAS.
This is only the third interstellar object astronomers have ever discovered. By interstellar we mean an object that travels between solar systems. It's also the fastest interstellar object ever measured.
She is an astronomer and researcher at the University of Oslo's Centre for Planetary Habitability.
A typical comet in our solar system follows an orbit that periodically brings it back into the inner solar system, but it only completes a full journey around the Sun on rare occasions. It can take hundreds of years before such a comet returns to the inner solar system.
But this does not apply to 3I/ATLAS. We will never see it again.
"It travels in an almost straight line through the solar system," said Luu.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Fram 2 mission astronauts on board lifts off from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 31, 2025.(Foto: Gregg Newton / AFP /NTB)
Norway gained its first astronaut
As a child, Jannicke Mikkelsen sat in a wheelchair and dreamed of space.
This year, her childhood dream came true, with help from a billionaire.
Now 38 years old, the cinematographer was launched into space with the Norwegian flag on her arm.
Jannicke Mikkelsen became the first person to represent Norway in space.(Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB)
On Tuesday, April 1, 2025, the spacecraft Fram 2 was launched into space, with Mikkelsen serving as the commander. That means she was responsible for safety on board.
The Fram 2 mission with SpaceX became the first crewed spaceflight to cross Earth's polar regions. The journey was privately funded by Chinese-born entrepreneur Chun Wang. He took part in the mission along with Mikkelsen, pilot Rabea Rogge from Germany, and mission specialist and medical officer Eric Philips from Australia.
After just under four days, the spacecraft landed in the sea off the coast of California, and Mikkelsen stepped out on unsteady legs.
"There are no words large enough for what we experienced in space. I'm glad my task was to film, so I can express what I experienced through film," Mikkelsen told Norwegian news agency NTB.
(Foto: NASA)
Intense activity on the Sun
Earth's 11-year solar cycle most likely hit its peak in 2025.
When there is intense activity on the sun, new groups of sunspots appear more often. These are areas with extremely strong magnetic fields.
These magnetic fields are twisted, compressed, and turned. At times, all that stored energy is released in enormous eruptions that hurl highly energetic particles and magnetic clouds into space.
This happens relatively often during the phase we are in now, which is the peak of the solar cycle, called solar maximum. The cycle began in December 2019.
With high solar activity, the risk of experiencing strong disturbances on Earth also increases. And it has also greatly increased the chances of witnessing the northern lights.
A screen reads 'AI' in reference to artificial intelligence as attendees gather during Rivian's first Autonomy and AI Day, showcasing developments in self-driving technology, in Palo Alto, California, U.S., December 11, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos BarriaCarlos Barria
AI as a tool and a pitfall
2025 was the year when artificial intelligence truly became widespread.
It has created many opportunities, but has also revealed several pitfalls.
Like when Tromsø municipality used AI (link in Norwegian) to create an official document about restructuring and closing schools. AI referred to studies that did not exist and to books by researchers who had never written them.
Because AI still makes up things that are not true. This is because its answers are probability calculations, researchers explained in this article on Science Norway.
People have taken note of the warnings. Eight out of ten are worried about misinformation, surveillance, and fraud due to AI, according to a Norwegian report in September. Just as many fear election manipulation, hacking, and identity theft.
In the shadows, behind well-known chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude, a new type of artificial intelligence has also emerged: Dark AI.
"These are language models that have been further trained or adapted for malicious purposes – such as planning bomb attacks or phishing operations," researcher Morten Goodwin told forskning.no in June (link in Norwegian).
And it has been put to use in mental health care. A study suggests that people find artificial intelligence more compassionate and understanding than professionals, even when they know they are talking to a chatbot. Around one in ten psychologists in the USA now use AI daily, according to a survey from the American Psychological Association.
So the big question is how artificial intelligence will affect the world in 2026.
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Written by: Trine Andreassen, Ingrid Spilde, Siw Ellen Jakobsen, Elise Kjørstad, Lasse Biørnstad, and Ida Irene Bergstrøm
