Rafi Letzter
Rafi wrote for Live Science from 2017 until 2021, when he became a technical writer for IBM Quantum. 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.
Latest articles by Rafi Letzter

By Rafi Letzter Published
A new paper uses data about the structure of the entire universe to measure the mass of one of its smallest, hardest-to-study components.

By Rafi Letzter Published
There's a galaxy not too far from our own that astronomers were very sure was shaped like an X, but a new, clearer radio telescope image shows that the galaxy is more like a stretched-out blob.
By Rafi Letzter Published

By Rafi Letzter Published

By Rafi Letzter Published
It's time to find all the missing black holes. That's the argument advanced by a pair of Japanese astrophysicists who want to find "isolated black holes."

By Rafi Letzter Published
A peculiar atmospheric process is sculpting meteorites into surprising shapes as they fall.

By Rafi Letzter Published
There are voids in the universe, and we can't see them properly. But the good news is that astronomers just got much better at not seeing them properly.

By Rafi Letzter Published
There are turbulent electrical currents coursing through the gas giant's outer atmosphere, producing brilliant auroras.

By Rafi Letzter Published
Trump administration officials are removing references to climate change from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) press releases, according to a ClimateWire report.

By Rafi Letzter Published
A team of researchers have posted a paper in which they claim to have achieved a holy grail of materials science: creating metallic hydrogen in a laboratory.

By Rafi Letzter Published
Something dark is spreading across the surface of Titan, and we may finally have some idea what it is.

By Rafi Letzter Published
A NASA mission to an ancient iron-nickel hunk has entered its final design phase, a key milestone on the way to reaching the distant destination in the mid-2020s.

By Rafi Letzter Published
There's something flashing us on the moon, and we don't know what it is. But that might be about to change.

By Rafi Letzter Published
SpaceX put 60 bright satellites in space May 23, and astronomers are sounding the alarm about the eventual 12,000-strong Starlink constellation SpaceX plans.

By Rafi Letzter Published
A new paper could end up being a big step toward solving one of the oldest unanswered puzzles in mathematics: Is the Riemann hypothesis correct?

By Rafi Letzter Published
There's a binary star system out there in the Milky Way, and it's followed a very simple pattern since the 1890s. Now, it's breaking its old habits.

By Rafi Letzter Published
Jupiter's magnetic field has changed since the 1970s, and now physicists think they know why it's happening.
By Rafi Letzter Published
Asteroid 1999 KW4 has its own moon!

By Rafi Letzter Published
The biggest, most expensive science experiment in the world might be losing all its dark matter. But physicists are looking on the bright side.

By Rafi Letzter Published
Why is Mars so dry? A new paper might have the explanation.

By Rafi Letzter Published
The kilogram isn't a thing anymore. Instead, it's an abstract idea about light and energy and fundamental universal constants.

By Rafi Letzter Published
We can't see it. It might not be made of normal matter. Our telescopes haven't directly detected it at all. But it sure seems like it's out there.

By Rafi Letzter Published
After these ripples in space and time pass through the universe, they may leave behind a sort of memory of their crossing.
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