, does<\/em> the universe rotate?<\/p>\nAshley Yeager<\/p>\n
So, probably no. This was a question posed by a very eccentric astronomer named George Gamow. Vera\u2019s husband actually showed Vera this paper that George Gamow had written about this idea. And she thought, \u201cWell, why would we not try to answer that question?\u201d<\/p>\n
Noam Hassenfeld<\/p>\n
The kind of question that, if she were at another university, maybe she wouldn\u2019t have had the freedom to dive into?<\/p>\n
Ashley Yeager<\/p>\n
I think so. I get the sense, reading through the literature and looking through the history, that she probably would have been guided to a more traditional question.<\/p>\n
And as she started to look through the data, the numbers started to suggest that there was this odd, sideways motion that perhaps could be interpreted as a universal rotation. She presented her idea to her master\u2019s thesis adviser, William Shaw.<\/p>\n
He says, \u201cYour conclusion is really good. I want to present it under my name at this upcoming astronomy conference.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Vera is like, \u201cNo! I might not be a member of this society yet. But you\u2019re not presenting my data for me. I\u2019m going to present it under my own name, come hell or high water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noam Hassenfeld<\/p>\n
So does she?<\/p>\n
Ashley Yeager<\/p>\n
Yes. She goes to this meeting. Apparently, the drive from New York to Pennsylvania, where the meeting was, was harrowing. It was the winter, snowy. They had a newborn in the car. Her dad was actually driving because he was the only one with a car at the time.<\/p>\n
But she gives the presentation, and the reaction is less than great. There are some heavy critics in the room. A lot of scoffing. She does have one person, Martin Schwarzschild, who encourages her. He says, \u201cThis is really interesting. But we need more data to be able to make this conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s a criticism that really sticks with her throughout her career. Later on, she really tries to have or collect as much data as possible to support her conclusions, just because of that experience.<\/p>\n
Noam Hassenfeld<\/p>\n
What happens next?<\/p>\n
Ashley Yeager<\/p>\n
She takes a little bit of a break, because she really has this strong sense of wanting to set up a home and start a family. There\u2019s this moment in the early 1950s, when she\u2019s at the playground with her son. She had been reading astrophysical journals to stay connected with what was going on in astronomy.<\/p>\n
So her son\u2019s playing in the sandbox and she\u2019s reading the journal, and she just breaks into tears because she misses doing research so much. She misses that curiosity of asking questions and searching for data, and really trying to figure out the answers to how the universe works.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s at that point that her husband says, \u201cYou need to go back to school. It\u2019s time. We\u2019ll figure out child care. We\u2019ll figure out how to get dinners made. But let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noam Hassenfeld<\/p>\n
So she goes back into astronomy. And eventually she starts doing research at Kitt Peak National Observatory, right? What\u2019s that like?<\/p>\n
Ashley Yeager<\/p>\n
We\u2019re talking late 1960s. This is a 84-inch telescope, very large. Vera is at the telescope with Kent Ford, her collaborator. They\u2019re looking at this galaxy called Andromeda, which is our nearest neighbor. They\u2019re looking at these really young, hot stars on the edge of the galaxy, and they\u2019re trying to get the speeds of these stars \u2014 how fast are these stars going around Andromeda?<\/p>\n
So they\u2019re looking at the data, and they\u2019re going, \u201cOh my gosh, this is not what we expected.\u201d The assumption was that the stars closer in would fly around the sun fast, and the stars farther out would go super slow. But these stars were moving faster than they expected.<\/p>\n
The only way for those stars far out in the galaxy to move that fast is [that] there\u2019s got to be something happening out there that we don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n
Noam Hassenfeld<\/p>\n
What does she think is going on?<\/p>\n
Ashley Yeager<\/p>\n
Well, she\u2019s not really sure. And again, she doesn\u2019t like to make assumptions or speak without data. So she and Kent Ford, and a couple other people, they really start to do a systematic study of galaxies.<\/p>\n
She does 20 galaxies, and then 40, and then 60. And they all show this bizarre behavior of stars, these stars out far in the galaxy, moving way, way too fast. So at that point, you know, the astronomy community is like, \u201cOkay, we have to deal with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1985, Vera Rubin gives this talk at the IAU. She says, \u201cNature has played a trick on us. That we have been studying matter that makes up only a small fraction of the universe. The rest of the universe is stuff that we don\u2019t understand, and we can\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And I think because she did this in so many galaxies \u2014 we\u2019re talking 60 galaxies \u2014 there was really no denying it. It was really her work that pushed the community over the edge, to say we have to accept the idea that dark matter exists.<\/p>\n
Noam Hassenfeld<\/p>\n
It sounds like if you really want to upend our entire conception of the universe, you have to come with some data.<\/p>\n
Ashley Yeager<\/p>\n
Yeah, absolutely. Because she held onto that criticism of her master\u2019s and PhD work \u2014 she would just go after the data, and really make sure that the story she told from that data rang true.<\/p>\n
One of the things that made her a remarkable scientist is her perseverance. She did face a lot of roadblocks, especially because she was a woman in science in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s. She had to really persevere. Unfortunately, she will never get to see or know what dark matter is. But I don\u2019t know that she had a problem with that. She would take pride in the fact that she opened a whole new realm of astronomy and physics.<\/p>\n
She basically created more questions than answers, and I think that\u2019s the mark of a remarkable scientist: when you open up these questions that no one ever thought of before. When you create a whole new generation of scientists who can go and answer them.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vera Rubin didn\u2019t \u201cdiscover\u201d dark matter, but she put it on the map. Dark matter is a wild concept. It\u2019s the idea that some mind-boggling percentage of all the matter in the universe may be invisible, and wholly unlike the matter that makes up Earth. Rubin is celebrated because she forced much of the astronomy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}