Published Sep 21, 2023 by Robert Annis

Thanks to its location in the far north, Alaska’s fruits and vegetables often grow to gigantic sizes not found anywhere else in the United States. Each year at the Alaska State Fair, growers compete for bragging rights for the heaviest cantaloupe (64.80 pounds), the longest cucumber (over 21 feet) and dozens of other records. State fair winners often also break world records.

For Stephen Brown, professor at the University of Alaska Agricultural Extension, these competitions are a symbol of identity.

“Giant vegetables are a very big part (no pun intended) of how we see ourselves,” says Brown. “Everything is bigger here. Alaskans are proud that these (fruits and vegetables) grow so far north.”

Two of the most popular events at the fair, as fans want to see which prize pumpkin is the plumpest or which cabbage collects the coveted crown. The pumpkin weighing contest usually takes place a week before the cabbage and offers similar pomp and pageantry. 

Brown, a professor at the University of Alaska, literally wrote the book on growing giant cabbages. The fascination is a gateway for laypeople to learn about growing their own food, big or not, he says.

What does it take to grow such voluminous vegetables? Alaska has a fairly short growing season. But every summer the sun sinks below the horizon for a few months, just a few hours each night. The near-constant sunlight stimulates the plants’ photosynthetic process, giving them the energy to grow exponentially in size, dwarfing their counterparts in the contiguous U.S., Brown says.

Published Sep 20, 2023 by In Which Kletetschka Is A Co-Author.

The first use of a novel method of analyzing Mars' gravitational force supports the idea that the planet once had an extensive northern ocean.

In doing so, the method defines the scope of what scientists refer to as the northern Martian paleo-ocean in more detail.

The work was published in July in the journal Icarus, which is affiliated with the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The research was led by Jaroslav Klokočník, professor emeritus at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Gunther Kletetschka, associate research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is among the three co-authors. Kletetschka is also affiliated with Charles University in the Czech Republic.

"A lot of people are excited about water on Mars because there may be life forms that once existed on Mars or maybe exist today in some bacterial form," Kletetschka said. "We can use this gravity approach to look for water on Mars, because we have done it already on Earth.