Category: 7. Science

Summary: A new AI system developed by computer scientists automatically screens open-access journals to identify potentially predatory publications. These journals often charge high fees to publish without proper peer review, undermining scientific credibility.

The AI analyzed over 15,000 journals and flagged more than 1,000 as questionable, offering researchers a scalable way to spot risks. While the system isn’t perfect, it serves as a crucial first filter, with human experts making the final calls.

Key Facts

• Predatory Publishing: Journals exploit researchers by charging fees without quality peer review.
• AI Screening: The system flagged over 1,000 suspicious journals out of 15,200 analyzed.
• Firewall for Science: Helps preserve trust in research by protecting against bad data.

Source: University of Colorado

A team of computer scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a new artificial intelligence platform that automatically seeks out “questionable” scientific journals.

The study, published Aug. 27 in the journal “Science Advances,” tackles an alarming trend in the world of research.

Daniel Acuña, lead author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, gets a reminder of that several times a week in his email inbox: These spam messages come from people who purport to be editors at scientific journals, usually ones Acuña has never heard of, and offer to publish his papers—for a hefty fee.

Such publications are sometimes referred to as “predatory” journals. They target scientists, convincing them to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to publish their research without proper vetting.

“There has been a growing effort among scientists and organizations to vet these journals,” Acuña said. “But it’s like whack-a-mole. You catch one, and then another appears, usually from the same company. They just create a new website and come up with a new name.”

His group’s new AI tool automatically screens scientific journals, evaluating their websites and other online data for certain criteria: Do the journals have an editorial board featuring established researchers? Do their websites contain a lot of grammatical errors?

Acuña emphasizes that the tool isn’t perfect. Ultimately, he thinks human experts, not machines, should make the final call on whether a journal is reputable.

But in an era when prominent figures are questioning the legitimacy of science, stopping the spread of questionable publications has become more important than ever before, he said.

“In science, you don’t start from scratch. You build on top of the research of others,” Acuña said. “So if the foundation of that tower crumbles, then the entire thing collapses.”

The shake down

When scientists submit a new study to a reputable publication, that study usually undergoes a practice called peer review. Outside experts read the study and evaluate it for quality—or, at least, that’s the goal.  

A growing number of companies have sought to circumvent that process to turn a profit. In 2009, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at CU Denver, coined the phrase “predatory” journals to describe these publications.

Often, they target researchers outside of the United States and Europe, such as in China, India and Iran—countries where scientific institutions may be young, and the pressure and incentives for researchers to publish are high.

“They will say, ‘If you pay $500 or $1,000, we will review your paper,’” Acuña said. “In reality, they don’t provide any service. They just take the PDF and post it on their website.”

A few different groups have sought to curb the practice. Among them is a nonprofit organization called the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Since 2003, volunteers at the DOAJ have flagged thousands of journals as suspicious based on six criteria. (Reputable publications, for example, tend to include a detailed description of their peer review policies on their websites.)

But keeping pace with the spread of those publications has been daunting for humans.

To speed up the process, Acuña and his colleagues turned to AI. The team trained its system using the DOAJ’s data, then asked the AI to sift through a list of nearly 15,200 open-access journals on the internet.

Among those journals, the AI initially flagged more than 1,400 as potentially problematic.

Acuña and his colleagues asked human experts to review a subset of the suspicious journals. The AI made mistakes, according to the humans, flagging an estimated 350 publications as questionable when they were likely legitimate. That still left more than 1,000 journals that the researchers identified as questionable.

“I think this should be used as a helper to prescreen large numbers of journals,” he said. “But human professionals should do the final analysis.”

A firewall for science

Acuña added that the researchers didn’t want their system to be a “black box” like some other AI platforms.

“With ChatGPT, for example, you often don’t understand why it’s suggesting something,” Acuña said. “We tried to make ours as interpretable as possible.”

The team discovered, for example, that questionable journals published an unusually high number of articles. They also included authors with a larger number of affiliations than more legitimate journals, and authors who cited their own research, rather than the research of other scientists, to an unusually high level.

The new AI system isn’t publicly accessible, but the researchers hope to make it available to universities and publishing companies soon. Acuña sees the tool as one way that researchers can protect their fields from bad data—what he calls a “firewall for science.”

“As a computer scientist, I often give the example of when a new smartphone comes out,” he said.

“We know the phone’s software will have flaws, and we expect bug fixes to come in the future. We should probably do the same with science.”

About this AI and science research news

Author: Daniel Strain
Source: University of Colorado
Contact: Daniel Strain – University of Colorado
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original Research: Open access.
“Estimating the predictability of questionable open-access journals” by Daniel Acuña et al. Science Advances

Abstract

Estimating the predictability of questionable open-access journals

Questionable journals threaten global research integrity, yet manual vetting can be slow and inflexible.

Here, we explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to systematically identify such venues by analyzing website design, content, and publication metadata.

Evaluated against extensive human-annotated datasets, our method achieves practical accuracy and uncovers previously overlooked indicators of journal legitimacy.

By adjusting the decision threshold, our method can prioritize either comprehensive screening or precise, low-noise identification.

At a balanced threshold, we flag over 1000 suspect journals, which collectively publish hundreds of thousands of articles, receive millions of citations, acknowledge funding from major agencies, and attract authors from developing countries.

Error analysis reveals challenges involving discontinued titles, book series misclassified as journals, and small society outlets with limited online presence, which are issues addressable with improved data quality.

Our findings demonstrate AI’s potential for scalable integrity checks, while also highlighting the need to pair automated triage with expert review.

The ESA’s JUpiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is on its way to conduct detailed studies of Jupiter and its three icy moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. To pick up speed and reach Jupiter by July 2031, the probe will conduct a gravity-assist maneuver with Venus on Sunday, August 31st. According to the ESA, the mission suffered an anomaly with its communications system, which temporarily severed its connection with Earth. Fortunately, a coordinated response by teams at the ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) and Airbus (JUICE’s manufacturer) restored communications in time for the probe’s flyby.

The anomaly occurred when a ground-based antenna in the ESA’s Deep Space Network failed to establish contact on July 16th. A quick diagnostic determined that the issue was not with the ground station, leading the JUICE team at ESOC to fear that multiple systems had failed, prompting the probe to enter survival mode. When this happens, the spacecraft starts to spin and its antenna (which will sweep across Earth once an hour) to transmit an intermittent signal. Since no signal was detected, the two teams began looking into the communications subsystem for indications of problems or misalignment.

As Angela Dietz, Juice Spacecraft Operations Manager, explained in an ESA press release:

Losing contact with a spacecraft is one of the most serious scenarios we can face. With no telemetry, it is much more difficult to diagnose and resolve the root cause of an issue. Waiting was not an option. We had to act fast. Waiting two weeks for the reset would have meant delaying important preparations for the Venus flyby.

To resolve the issue, the team could wait for the next automatic reset, which was fourteen days away. Alternately, they could try blind messaging – sending commands in the direction of JUICE and hope they were received by one of its backup low-gain antennas. This latter approach posed a challenge since JUICE was about 200 million km (125.25 million mi) from Earth and on the other side of the Sun at the time, which imposes a communications lag of 22 minutes to send and receive a signal. Recovery attempts lasted almost 20 hours straight, with the teams working through the night, and they eventually got a response.

The blind commands activated the spacecraft’s signal amplifier (which boosts JUICE’s signals), and contact was re-established. The teams found that JUICE was in perfect working conditions, that no systems had failed, and the spacecraft was still on track to make its flyby with Venus. They also determined that the anomaly was caused by a timing issue with the software that switches the signal amplifier on and off. Said Dietz:

It was a subtle bug, but one that we were prepared to investigate and resolve. We have identified a number of possible ways to ensure that this does not happen again, and we are now deciding which solution would be the best to implement. This was a textbook example of teamwork under pressure. Thanks to the team’s calm and methodical approach, we were able to recover Juice without any lasting impact on the mission.

Timeline of JUICE’s journey to Jupiter and its moons. Credit: ESA

JUICE will make its closest approach to Venus at 07:28 CEST on Sunday, August 31st (01:28 EST; 10:28 PST, Aug. 30th), one of four planned gravity-assist maneuvers. The first occurred in August 2024 when JUICE made a flyby with the Earth-Moon system, and two more will occur with Earth in September 2026 and January 2029. These maneuvers are necessary since JUICE is one of the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever launched (6000 kg; 13230 lbs). The coming flybys will also adjust the probe’s trajectory so that it will rendezvous with Jupiter in July 2031.

Further Reading: JUICE

A human-occupied vehicle (HOV) probing the deep Pacific Ocean has cast a light upon a massive undersea ‘metropolis’.

The tortuous system of deep craters and dolomite walls blows the Atlantic Ocean’s famous ‘Lost City’ out of the water.

Through a curtain of falling marine ‘snow’, the ghostly carbonate walls and jagged rocks around twenty hydrothermal vents shimmer in the heat – almost as if they were a deep-sea mirage.

At 11.1 square kilometers (4.3 square miles), the newly discovered hydrothermal field is over a hundred times larger than its Atlantic counterpart.

The Lost City, with its jagged landscape of towers and turrets, was discovered near the mid-Atlantic ridge in 2000, and it was once the largest field of hydrothermal vents known anywhere in the world.

Related: ‘Lost City’ Deep Beneath The Ocean Is Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before on Earth

It now lies in the shadow of another major aggregation of vents discovered on the whole other side of the world, northeast of Papua New Guinea.

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Researchers at Laoshan Laboratory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have named the Pacific counterpart the Kunlun hydrothermal field.

Like the Lost City, their discovery is a rarity, and it may be an even better example of how life first started on Earth.

Kunlun’s unique seafloor is gushing hydrogen-rich fluids at temperatures under 40°C – much colder than the ‘black smokers’ of other hydrothermal vents, which resemble underwater chimneys.

Kunlun’s rich hydrogen fluids are thought to resemble the ‘hot soups’ that existed on Earth billions of years ago, when life first began. This makes the location a perfect backdrop for further research on how biological life may form from inorganic matter.

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“What’s particularly fascinating is the ecological potential,” says marine geochemist Weidong Sun from CAS.

“We observed diverse deep-sea life thriving in this environment, including shrimp, squat lobsters, anemones, and tubeworms – species that may rely on hydrogen-driven chemosynthesis.”

Based on an analysis of the hydrothermal field, researchers estimate that Kunlun contributes up to 8 percent of the flux in abiotic hydrogen across all the world’s submarine sources.

That is a huge contribution from just one system, according to Sun and colleagues, led by marine geologists Lianfu Li and Hongyun Zhang from the Laoshan Laboratory.

Unlike the Lost City, which is marked by thin, jagged towers of dolomite, the craters at Kunlun can stretch hundreds of meters in diameter and plummet more than 100 meters deep. Even the shallower depressions are typically deeper than 30 meters.

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“Compared to the carbonate towers formed in the Lost City, these pipes/pits provide a more sustained and stable evolutionary time frame, offering a potentially more suitable environment for the evolution of early life,” the team argues.

The Kunlun pipes were formed when seawater penetrated Earth’s mantle, the interaction between fluid and rock releasing heat and hydrogen. The first stage of formation would have probably resulted in a major explosion, creating a crater. Then, as fractures formed in the rock, more saltwater reactions led to more hydrogen.

Over time, carbonate sediment gradually sealed these channels until the hydrogen started to accumulate again, causing more minor explosions.

The vents are expected to eventually go ‘extinct’ once seawater can no longer probe the depths and interact with hydrogen-rich materials below.

To date, scientists have discovered most hydrogen-rich vents near spreading tectonic plates. Kunlun, however, sits 80 kilometers west of a trench, within the Carolina Plate.

The researchers note that this system, flourishing with deep-sea life, may also be an “ideal target” for retrieving deep-sea hydrogen as an energy source.

“The Kunlun system is unique not just because of the exceptionally high hydrogen flux we observed, but also because of its scale and geological setting,” says Sun.

“It demonstrates that serpentinization-driven hydrogen generation can occur far from mid-ocean ridges, challenging previous assumptions.”

Perhaps there are more undersea metropolises like Kunlun waiting to be found in the ocean’s abyss.

The study was published in Science Advances.

As night falls in the rainforests, orangutans climb into the canopy to construct intricate tree nests, displaying remarkable ingenuity.

These comfy platforms are carefully engineered beds, providing warmth, comfort, protection from predators, and even reduce mosquito bites.

Scientists have long wondered how young orangutans learn to master such complex architecture. Recent findings reveal that they acquire this skill through close observation and practice, a process called observational social learning.

Orangutans build nests for survival

Nest-building is essential for survival. Unlike many behaviors in animals, this skill is neither entirely instinctive nor quickly learned.

Orangutans must manipulate branches, twigs, and leaves with strength and dexterity while making decisions about materials and structure.

Night nests, far more elaborate than day nests, can include linings, pillows, blankets, and even roofs.

To build such structures requires both technical know-how and material knowledge, making nest-building a cognitively demanding task.

Young orangutans begin showing interest in nests at just six months, playing with leaves and branches.

Practice of basic day nests starts around age one, but night nest practice begins only at three years and is not mastered until about the age of eight.

Complex additions, such as multitree nests and comfort elements, appear later. This long timeline shows that the skill is not acquired quickly but gradually, with repeated attempts and guided observation.

Learning from mom

Researchers documented that immatures who carefully peered at their mothers during nest-building were far more likely to practice soon afterward.

Merely being nearby without watching closely did not have the same effect. This highlights the importance of selective attention in learning.

“Nest-building is critical to survival in orangutans but is surprisingly not the focus of a lot of research,” noted Dr. Ani Permana from the University of Warwick.

“We previously reported that it takes multiple years for immature orangutans to learn to nest-build but, based on 17 years of observational data, this paper shows that this learning process is highly dependent on young animals carefully watching the nest-building of others.”

Orangutan nests are complex

The study also showed that young orangutans pay special attention to complex features like multitree nests, twig manipulations, and comfort elements.

These require memorizing multiple steps and sequences. After observing these, immatures increased their practice, suggesting they were specifically learning the more challenging parts.

Simpler nests, such as single-tree day nests, did not trigger the same level of focused observation.

“Orangutan nest-building tendency may have some innate basis, but the details and method must be socially learned, starting from a very young age, by watching and practicing, learning from mistakes as they grow and this paper is the first time this has been shown in wild apes,” Dr. Permana added.

At first, immatures mostly learn from their mothers, but as they grow older, they begin peering at other group members, thereby expanding their knowledge base.

Learning what to use

Beyond construction skills, orangutans also learn what materials to use.

“Aside from learning ‘how to’ build a nest, immature orangutans also appear to learn the ‘know-what’ of which materials to use,” noted Dr. Caroline Schuppli, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

The choice of tree species is important, and infants – who primarily peer at their mothers – are more likely to select the same species their mothers use.

“Just like human teenagers finding their own path, maturing orangutans increasingly peer at the nest-building of others and begin experimenting with the tree species those individuals use,” Dr. Schuppli continued.

Returning to roots

Interestingly, adults often revert to using the tree species favored by their mothers, even after experimenting with alternatives in youth.

“Ultimately, adult orangutans tend to revert to the nest materials used by their mothers, perhaps recognizing that the most effective methods had already been established,” Dr. Schuppli noted.

“This consistent variation in nest materials across generations indicates that wild orangutan populations possess cultural elements that could be lost without the conservation of the species and their habitats,”

Orangutans learn and pass on traditions

The study emphasized four main points: peering, not just proximity, drives learning; immatures focus on complex multi-step elements; role models expand with age; and knowledge of tree species is socially transmitted.

These findings suggest orangutans display cultural variation, with nest-building traditions passed through generations.

Nest-building is an evolutionarily ancient behavior shared by great apes.

By proving that orangutans acquire this skill through observational social learning, the study suggests that such cultural learning has deep roots in primate history.

It highlights not just the intelligence of orangutans but also their fragile cultural heritage – one that can only continue if their forest homes are preserved.

The study is published in the journal Communications Biology.

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Fireflies light up landscapes at night using captivating bioluminescent displays in search of mates. Some enterprising spiders have now learned to turn those glowing invitations into deadly dinner traps.

Recent research reveals that a species of sheet web spider uses firefly bioluminescence to draw unsuspecting prey into its webs.

This unusual strategy has now been detailed in the Journal of Animal Ecology by ecologists at Tunghai University in Taiwan. The findings show a remarkable case of predators reusing their prey’s own signals for survival.

Spiders twist firefly glow into traps

Researchers noticed that Psechrus clavis spiders leave captured fireflies alive in their webs, where the trapped insects continue glowing for nearly an hour. During this time, the spiders check back repeatedly, seemingly aware of the signal’s value.

This observation prompted experiments in which the team added LED lights mimicking firefly glow to some webs while leaving others untouched.

The results were striking: webs with LEDs attracted three times more prey than control webs, and when counting firefly prey alone, the attraction rate increased tenfold.

This confirmed that glowing prey acted as bait, amplifying the spiders’ hunting success. The researchers also noted that most glowing victims were male fireflies, likely fooled by the lights into thinking they had found mates.

Uncovering signal-stealing spiders

“Our findings highlight a previously undocumented interaction where firefly signals, intended for sexual communication, are also beneficial to spiders,” said Dr. I-Min Tso, lead author of the research.

“This study sheds new light on the ways that nocturnal sit-and-wait predators can rise to the challenges of attracting prey and provides a unique perspective on the complexity of predator-prey interactions.”

The researchers suggest that this strategy may help spiders avoid having to produce their own light, unlike deep-sea predators such as anglerfish.

Spiders target glowing prey

Psechrus clavis spiders (also known as lace sheet weavers) inhabit subtropical forests across East Asia.

Their main prey, the winter firefly Diaphanes lampyroides, emits steady, non-flashing bioluminescence. This constant glow makes them particularly vulnerable to spider manipulation.

Video recordings revealed that the spiders treated various prey species differently. They immediately consumed moths, but they delayed eating fireflies.

“Handling prey in different ways suggests that the spider can use some kind of cue to distinguish between the prey species they capture and determine an appropriate response,” said Dr. Tso.

“We speculate that it is probably the bioluminescent signals of the fireflies that are used to identify fireflies, enabling spiders to adjust their prey-handling behavior accordingly.”

This ability highlights the adaptive nature of the spiders, showing not just opportunism but also prey-specific strategies.

Deception at the heart of survival

The new study emphasizes that sit-and-wait predators often rely on deception because active strategies can be energetically costly.

P. clavis already uses its body color and web structure to lure insects, particularly moths. The use of glowing fireflies as a signal expands this deceptive toolkit.

The researchers speculate that this enhanced return reduces the spiders’ need to invest energy in maintaining bright body coloration for attracting prey.

In other words, glowing fireflies provide an outsourced signal, sparing spiders the cost of producing one themselves.

Testing spiders in the field

The field experiment took place in the National Taiwan University’s Xitou Nature Education Area, a conifer plantation forest that serves as a living laboratory for ecological studies.

This setting allowed the researchers to observe the spiders within a natural environment where fireflies are common and the interactions between predator and prey unfold in real time.

To mimic the glow of captured fireflies, the team used carefully designed LED lights. These artificial lights closely matched the wavelength and intensity of firefly bioluminescence, making them effective stand-ins for the real insects.

Limits of artificial light

Still, the researchers acknowledged that artificial light cannot fully replicate the complexity of genuine firefly signals. Subtle variations in glow, rhythm, and biological cues may influence how other insects respond.

For this reason, the team noted that using live fireflies would provide the most authentic test of the spiders’ strategy.

Yet such an approach poses immense challenges in practice, since handling, controlling, and releasing live glowing insects in the field is both logistically difficult and ethically delicate.

Even with these limitations, the findings carry weight. The results demonstrate that predator-prey interactions involve layers of deception, adaptation, and unexpected strategies rather than straightforward acts of consumption.

A firefly’s light, intended as a call for romance, may instead guide other unsuspecting creatures straight into danger.

In this case, what begins as a signal of attraction becomes a tool for survival in the hand – or rather the web – of a patient spider.

The study is published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

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Astronomers have imaged a newborn gas giant, WISPIT 2b, that sits inside a wide gap in a disk of dust and gas around a young, sun-like star. The event was captured with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT).

The planet shows up as a compact source tucked into the dark lane between bright rings. It moves from epoch to epoch in a way that fits an orbit. The host star, WISPIT 2, is only about 5 million years old, so this is a snapshot of a system that is still assembling.

Richelle van Capelleveen of Leiden University led the research team that reported the discovery. The work brought together researchers from multiple institutions who combined their expertise to confirm the planet’s presence.

Planet forming in its birth environment

Planet catalogs now list nearly 6,000 confirmed worlds around stars other than the Sun, a total tracked by NASA’s Exoplanet Archive in a recent update.

Most of those planets were not seen directly, but inferred from how they tug on or dim the light from their stars.

Catching a forming planet in its birth environment is rare. It presents an opportunity for scientists to test ideas about how giant planets grow and how their gravity sculpts rings and gaps.

Seeing the planet and the disk together also ties structure to cause. That link is essential if we want to explain why planetary systems end up with such different architectures.

Telescopes revealed the young planet

The Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE camera isolated faint light from the star’s surroundings and revealed a multi-ringed disk that stretches to roughly 35 billion miles (56 billion kilometers).

The rings are separated by gaps, and one of those gaps hosts the compact source identified as the planet.

Across multiple observing dates, the point source shifted position in a way that matches Keplerian motion. This means that its motion was governed by gravity in a bound orbit.

The team also showed that the source tracks with the star in the sky, rather than drifting like a background object.

In near infrared images, the planet glows from residual heat left over from formation. That glow stands out against the fainter, polarized light that is scattered by tiny dust grains in the disk.

A planet soon after birth

A companion letter reports a strong H-alpha signal from the planet, the deep red light emitted when excited hydrogen drops to a lower energy state. That detection, made with the MagAO-X instrument in Chile, is a hallmark of gas falling onto the world.

Accretion means the planet is still building its atmosphere. The visible light signal complements the infrared image and nails down the planet’s identity.

Together, these measurements show a consistent picture of a young giant that is still pulling in material from its surroundings. They also give observers multiple ways to follow how its brightness and environment change over time.

Planet shapes surrounding dust rings

The authors show that WISPIT 2b is the first unambiguous planet seen inside a multi-ringed disk. That combination creates a clean experiment for studying how a single, massive body shapes nearby dust and gas.

The outer disk extends to about 35 billion miles (56 billion kilometers) from the star, while the planet orbits near 5.3 billion miles (8.5 billion kilometers). Its gravity likely helps keep the surrounding lane partly cleared by exchanging angular momentum with material in the gap.

Because the disk is bright and well-resolved, researchers can measure ring locations, gap widths, and the vertical height of the scattering surface.

Those geometric clues let theorists estimate disk viscosity, a key parameter that controls how quickly disks spread and how efficiently planets migrate.

Models of giant planet formation

In 2018, astronomers confirmed the presence of PDS 70 b inside a large inner cavity, the first clear case of an embedded protoplanet. That system later turned out to host a second forming planet.

WISPIT 2b now adds a sun-like system with a clearly ringed outer disk and a forming giant farther from its star. It offers a second, different test case for models of giant planet formation and disk evolution.

A benchmark for future research

Astronomers often use the astronomical unit (AU) to express distances in young systems, where 1 AU equals about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Converting to everyday units keeps the scale clear without introducing new jargon.

At roughly 57 AU, WISPIT 2b circles the star at about 5.3 billion miles (8.5 billion kilometers). The disk itself reaches out to around 35 billion miles, which is large enough to let observers resolve multiple rings and gaps from Earth.

Those numbers come from direct imaging and from fitting the planet’s small apparent motion relative to the star over several observation dates. The fit points to a bound orbit that is consistent with the gap geometry seen in the disk.

“Discovering this planet was an amazing experience,” said van Capelleveen. She emphasized how the system’s clarity makes it an ideal benchmark for future work

That practicality matters. A clean case lets multiple teams compare models to the same measurements and make steady progress.

Imaging planet formation

Follow up with ALMA can trace gas motions near the gap and look for subtle kinks that reveal how the planet perturbs its surroundings. JWST spectroscopy can probe the planet’s thermal emission and search for molecules in its young atmosphere.

More precise astrometry will tighten the orbit and, with time, allow a dynamical mass estimate. That mass can be compared to the gap’s width to check how well current theories predict the link between planet mass and disk structure.

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Image credit: C. Ginski/R. van Capelleveen et al.

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When the Crew-11 astronauts launched to the International Space Station on August 1, 2025, they carried with them another chapter in space farming: the latest VEG-03 experiments, complete with seed pillows ready for planting.

Growing plants provides nutrition for astronauts, as well as psychological benefits that help maintain crew morale during missions.

During VEG-03 MNO, astronauts will be able to choose what they want to grow from a seed library including Wasabi mustard greens, Red Russian Kale, and Dragoon lettuce.

From Seed to Space Salad

The experiment takes place inside Veggie, a chamber about the size of carry-on luggage. The system uses red, blue, and green LED lights to provide the right spectrum for plant growth. Clear flexible bellows — accordion-like walls that expand to accommodate maturing plants — create a semi-controlled environment around the growing area.

Astronauts plant thin strips containing their selected seeds into fabric “seed pillows” filled with a special clay-based growing medium and controlled-release fertilizer. The clay, similar to what’s used on baseball fields, helps distribute water and air around the roots in the microgravity environment.

Crew members will monitor the plants, add water as needed, and document growth through regular photographs. At harvest time, astronauts will eat some of the fresh produce while freezing other samples for return to Earth, where scientists will analyze their nutritional content and safety.

How this benefits space exploration

Fresh food will become critical as astronauts venture farther from Earth on missions to the Moon and Mars. NASA aims to validate different kinds of crops to add variety to astronaut diets during long-duration space exploration missions, while giving crew members more control over what they grow and eat.

How this benefits humanity

The techniques developed for growing crops in space’s challenging conditions may also improve agricultural practices on Earth. Indoor crop cultivation approaches similar to what astronauts do in Veggie might also be adapted for horticultural therapy programs, giving elderly or disabled individuals new ways to experience gardening when traditional methods aren’t accessible.

Related Resources

About BPS

NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomenon under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefitting life on Earth.

Astrobiology, space biology,

We study the amount, size distribution and material composition of (sub-)mic aerosol particles in the lower Venus atmosphere < 50 km.

Our GGchem phase-equilibrium model predicts metal-chloride and metal-fluoride molecules to be present in the gas over the Venus surface in trace concentrations < 2.E-12, in particular FeCl₂, NaCl, KCl and SiF₄.

Using an improved version of the DiffuDrift model developed by Woitke et al. 2020, we find that these molecules deposit to form solid potassium sulphate K₂SO₄, sodium sulphate Na₂SO₄, and pyrite FeS₂ above about 15.5 km, 9.5 km and 2.4 km, respectively.

These heights coincide well with the three potential haze layers found in the Pioneer Venus Large Probe neutral mass spectrometer data by Mogul et al.2023. The particles with radius < 0.3 mic can be dredged up from the ground to reach the sulphuric acid cloud base from below by diffusion.

The particle density decreases from ~ 5000/cm³ at ground level to ~100/cm³ at a height of 45 km. Particles larger than about 1 mic are found to stay confined to the ground < 10 km, indicating that the larger, so-called mode 3 particles, if they exist, cannot originate from the surface. All particles are expected to be coated by a thin layer of FeS₂, Na₂SO₄ and K₂SO₄.

We have included the repelling effect of particle charges on the coagulation, without which the model would predict much too steep gradients close to the surface, which is inconsistent with measured opacity data. Our models suggest that the particles must have at least 100 negative charges per micron of particle radius at ground level, and > 50/mic at a height of 45 km.

Peter Woitke, Manuel Scherf, Christiane Helling, Paul B. Rimmer, Martin Ferus, Helmut Lammer, Fabian Weichbold, Kateřina Němečková, Petr Eminger, Jaroslav Kačina, Tereza Constantinou

Comments: 18 pages, accepted by PSJ on 27-Aug-2025
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2508.20790 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2508.20790v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.20790
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Submission history
From: Peter Woitke
[v1] Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:54:19 UTC (2,457 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20790
Astrobiology