Does anyone have any opinions as to what the most significant achievements in science or astronomy will be in 2009?

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

And you have a poll!

This is more open-ended.

Me, I'm going to enjoy the International Year of Astronomy

This thread is here replacing the poll jaksichj started a while ago.

I predict that in 2009:
- there will be several supersymmetric particles seen decaying.
- very high energy gamma rays will be observed arriving after less energetic rays from a few very short duration events from very far away.
- SGR A* will be seen with a small flare while being observed with the best VLBI microwave tools available.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Danish physicist Lene Vestergaard Hau will expand on her successful transformation of light into matter and back into light using Bose-Einstein condensates by beginning with matter, transforming it to light, transmitting it a distance, and transforming it back to matter again, thus paving the way for the world's first operational Star Trek-like transporter system.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

I hope the rescinding of that ridiculous IAU resolution that demoted Pluto and states that dwarf planets are not planets at all (one can always hope).