In 2016, astronomer Vera C. Rubin died at the age of 88. Three years later, Congress specify The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is named in her honor. The observatory’s telescope will feature the largest digital camera ever and is scheduled to come online in 2025. The camera will continue to take pictures over the next decade as part of a mapping project to capture the changing sky.
Meteors, supernovas, meteors, and comets are all captured on camera. But the observatory will also tell us more about something we can’t see: dark matter.
“Scientists have known about the existence of dark matter, but Rubin’s observations helped us understand it,” says Bryan J. Field, a theoretical physicist and program manager at Cosmic Frontiers in the Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics.
Vera Rubin’s exploration of dark matter
Rubin first began observing dark matter in 1963 and soon quit his professorship to focus on research. In 1965, she began working in the Department of Geomagnetics at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (now Carnegie Science). She was the first female scientist on the institute’s staff.
There she met Kent Ford, who designed telescopes and other equipment. Rubin and Ford published their first paper together in 1965. Between 1976 and 1986The two published 35 papers. Astrophysical Journal and 11 inches astronomical journal.
Rubin and Ford were trying to figure out how stars and gas clouds within galaxies rotate around their centers. Rubin’s research found evidence that invisible substances exist in much larger quantities than ordinary substances.
Rubin and Ford analyzed data In 60 galaxies. They found that stars at the outer edges of the galaxy move at similar speeds as stars closer to the center. This did not match what physicists expected. This means there must be some kind of invisible mass within this galaxy.
Rubin is not the first scientist to theorize about dark matter. In the early 1930s, another scientist suggested that a larger explanation was needed for the movement of galaxies within clusters. That’s been the question for over 30 years. But it is Rubin’s work It helped explain dark matter to the scientific community.
“It’s hard to explain how revolutionary it was at the time,” says Field. “These have been difficult times for astronomy. “We were still trying to figure out how the stars shine.”
Rubin’s journal article brought her data to the scientific community and provided much-needed answers.
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Vera Rubin’s Journey
Prior to his studies, Rubin was born in Philadelphia in 1928. Her father was an engineer. helped her build telescope. Her mother was a housewife who recognized her daughter’s pursuit of knowledge and wrote a note to the local librarian letting Rubin check out books from the adult section.
In high school, Rubin was ignored by her physics teacher, who seemed surprised that girls could enroll in her classes. When Rubin told her the good news that she had been accepted to Vassar College on a scholarship, he told her she would do well. “…As long as you stay away from science.”
After being accepted to Vassar College, Rubin took astronomy courses and worked as a teaching assistant to an astronomy professor. During the summer she worked at the Naval Research Laboratory. She graduated and married in early 1948 and then began graduate school at Cornell University, where her husband was working on his doctorate in chemistry.
After earning her master’s degree in 1951, Rubin was a young mother living in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. that Astrophysical Journal (where she will be published later) While her son played in the sandbox and decided to study further. She attended Georgetown University for her Ph.D. in astronomy. When she graduated in 1954, her husband and children were in attendance. After graduating, Rubin began teaching at the university.
Read more: Did massive stars composed of dark matter fuel the early universe?
Remembering the ‘unstoppable warrior’
As Rubin’s fame grew, she received accolades. She was the second female astronomer elected to the National Academy of Sciences and received the National Medal of Science in 1993.
Rubin used her position to advocate for others, especially women in science who were barred from graduate programs, job opportunities, and admission to professional organizations.
When Rubin passed away, Congress recorded both his accomplishments and his obstacles. The Chairman of Carnegie Science paid tribute to her shortly after her death. It’s called Rubin. “A warrior who never stops.” He reflected on the fact that she was initially rejected from the Palomar Observatory because she was a woman, saying it would have been a “tremendous loss” to have listened to those who tried to limit her.
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Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of America’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. I majored in Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a focus on media framing, message construction, and stigma communication. Emilie has written three nonfiction books. Her third work, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, out October 3, 2023, from Chicago Review Press, is co-written with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
