Rafi Letzter

Rafi Letzter

Staff Writer
Rafi joined Live Science in 2017. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of journalism. You can find his past science reporting at Inverse, Business Insider and Popular Science, and his past photojournalism on the Flash90 wire service and in the pages of The Courier Post of southern New Jersey.

Articles by: Rafi Letzter

A still from an Ohio State Highway Patrol video shows the leak in February 2018.

Catastrophic Ohio Methane Leak Stayed Hidden Until a Satellite Found It

By Rafi Letzter published

A blowout in Ohio made little news in 2018, but satellite images show it was a major global event.

newborn panda in incubator

Giant Panda Babies Are Born 'Undercooked' and No One Knows Why

By Rafi Letzter published

The leading theory just fell apart.

Map of Antarctica ice sheet topography.

Scientists Found the Deepest Land on Earth Hiding Beneath Antarctica's Ice

By Rafi Letzter published

A new mapping effort revealed critical new details of Antarctica's hidden land.

A photo shows the experimental device in which the never-before-seen effect took place.

Physicists Use Bubbling Quantum Vacuum to Hopscotch Heat Across Empty Space

By Rafi Letzter published

Heat isn't supposed to move like this.

The milky way

Our Large, Adult Galaxy Is As Massive As 890 Billion Suns

By Rafi Letzter published

We live in a very big house, but we can't see most of it.

A NASA illustration shows what a system containing a black hole and a star might look like.

Impossibly Big Black Hole Was Probably Impossible After All

By Rafi Letzter published

It just wasn't that big.

An illustration shows a small neutrons star surround by a disk of loose material.

First-of-Its-Kind Neutron Star Flashes Bizarre 'Cyclotron Line' at Earth

By Rafi Letzter published

Neutron stars have never been caught behaving this way before.

A NASA illustration shows the Parker Solar Probe diving heat shield-first toward the sun. The probe's elliptical orbit will take it closer and closer to the solar surface on every pass.

Solar Probe Finds Active, Mysterious Corona, Surprising Scientists

By Rafi Letzter published

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has passed through the outer atmosphere of the sun, and now we get to see what it found.

A panoramic image shows the Milky Way, our home galaxy.

19 Galaxies Are Apparently Missing Dark Matter. No One Knows Why.

By Rafi Letzter published

Nineteen newly discovered dwarf galaxies seem to be missing their dark matter, and physicists aren't sure why.

Milky Way Geysers

There Might Be Cracks in the Universe — But We Can't See Them from Earth

By Rafi Letzter published

The cracks, if they exist, are old, remnants of a time shortly after the Big Bang.

An image shows how galaxy-sized bubbles shove gas around in the Perseus galaxy cluster. The X at the center of the image shows the location of the supermassive black hole at its center.

3 Black Holes Possibly Seen Cooking Their Galaxies Alive

By Rafi Letzter published

Without the turbulence, the galaxies would die in just a few billion years.

A NASA illustration shows Neptune's moons. In the foreground is Hippocamp, discovered in 2013.

Neptune's Wobbling Moons Are Locked in a Never-Before-Seen Orbital Dance

By Rafi Letzter published

Standing on one moon, you'd see the other pass overhead twice before ducking around to pass on the other side.

Illustration of supernova

Mysterious Gravitational Wave Sparks Days-Long Hunt — But It Was Just a Glitch

By Rafi Letzter published

This wasn't what anyone was hoping for.

beef

Can a Person Survive Eating Only Beef?

By Rafi Letzter published

High cholesterol, cancer and a shorter life span would all be very real risks.

An illustration shows how laser light (represented by the glowing orbs) hits a charge density wave, it changes the wave's behavior.

New, 'Hidden' State of Matter Coaxed into Being by Ultrafast Laser Flashes

By Rafi Letzter published

Physicists think this might be the first of many hidden states of matter that could be uncovered using laser flashes.

Early data from the Planck collaboration maps the cosmic microwave background across the sky.

The Universe Might Be a Giant Loop

By Rafi Letzter published

Is the universe flat? Maybe not.

A NASA illustration shows an asteroid striking a planet.

Asteroid Impacts Might Wipe Out Alien Life Around Dwarf Stars

By Rafi Letzter published

What's the recipe for a living planet? A new paper suggests that the right number of impacts is a key ingredient.

prime numbers

Mathematicians Solve 'Twin Prime Conjecture' — In an Alternate Universe

By Rafi Letzter published

Mathematicians have uncovered a big new piece of evidence for one of the most famous unproven ideas in mathematics, known as the twin prime conjecture.

Neutron stars are among the densest objects in the universe.

Missing-Link Atoms Turn Up in Aftermath of Neutron-Star Collision

By Rafi Letzter published

The Plasma Liner Experiment is pictured at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Giant Plasma Guns Could Be the Answer to Limitless Fusion Power

By Rafi Letzter published

Los Alamos physicists want to combine two fusion-power techniques and finally harness the energy source that powers the sun.

A still from a video shows a fireball passing over Kyoto, Japan after 1 a.m. on April 28, 2017.

Fireball That Flew Over Japan in 2017 Was Tiny Piece of Giant Asteroid that Might One Day Threaten Earth

By Rafi Letzter published

If you'd looked up into the sky in Kyoto, Japan, on April 28, 2017, you may have seen a preview of an event that could, far down the road, threaten the whole Earth.

Asteroid Breaking Apart

An Asteroid-Smashing Star Ground a Giant Rock to Bits and Covered Itself in the Remains

By Rafi Letzter published

Good news for scientists. Bad news for any asteroid dwellers.

A Hubble Space Telescope image shows RS Puppis, one of the brightest Cepheids visible in our galaxy. Astrophysicists use stars like this to calculate the expansion rate of the universe.

How the Universe Stopped Making Sense

By Rafi Letzter published

What's going on?

An artist's depiction of the first identified interstellar object, 'Oumuamua.

A Second Interstellar Visitor Has Arrived in Our Solar System. This Time, Astronomers Think They Know Where It Came From

By Rafi Letzter published

When 'Oumuamua passed through our solar system in 2017, no one could figure out where the object came from. But astronomers think they've worked out how Comet 2I/Borisov got here.

The Starship MK1 assembled at SpaceX's build and launch facility in Texas.

Why NASA's Annoyed About Elon Musk's Giant Rocket

By Rafi Letzter published

SpaceX has never flown a person into space in its first spacecraft, the Crew Dragon. But already Musk is showing off his big, shiny Starship — and NASA is bristling.