Johanna Teske: Ok, this is the spectrum.
tea spoon: Vera Rubin means a lot to many astronomers. This was one of the means she used to discover the existence of dark matter. Dark matter is now known to be the dominant form of matter in our universe.
tea spoon: She really was part of an attempt to make astronomy more inclusive and increase opportunities for women in science and astronomy.
[TEXT]
In 1942, a 14-year-old teenager named Vera Rubin built a telescope out of cardboard with her father.
She continued to change our understanding of the galaxy and opened the door for women astronomers.
Alicia Weinberger: She is often credited as the mother of dark matter. Because her best-known science is discovering that galaxies appear to have much more mass than can be explained by the amount of visible light coming from them. Performer.
[TEXT]
In 1948 she received a BA in Astronomy from Vasser. She is the only astronomy graduate.
After being rejected by Princeton University for being a woman, Vera enrolled at Cornell University instead.
There she studied 109 galaxies and made one of the first observations of Hubble’s law.
— or how galaxies move relative to each other.
Princeton University will not admit women to its astronomy programs for the next 27 years.
tea spoon: For a long time women didn’t get a lot of attention, or their role in science didn’t get much attention.
[TEXT]
After years of teaching, Vera C. Rubin joined the Carnegie Geomagnetic Laboratory in 1965 and met collaborator Kent Ford. Kent With her Ford, she used spectrometers to analyze spiral galaxies, including the Andromeda Galaxy, about 2.5 million light-years away.
Wine Burger: Very carefully, with the help of a new instrument developed here, we were able to measure how quickly stars in the outer part of the galaxy rotate around their centers.
Wine Burger: She was particularly interested in taking spectra. Therefore, we decompose the light components of the celestial body into color components. This gives us a lot of information about how celestial bodies move and what they are made of.
[TEXT]
She and Ford made a startling discovery.
Wine Burger: Vera found that the outer reaches of the galaxy appear to be moving too fast. This has led to the hypothesis that there is some kind of dark matter, that is, matter that has gravity but does not interact with light and does not produce late, possibly explaining these peculiar rotation curves. .
tea spoon: These are her painstaking observations.
— Yes, our favorite UGC.
tea spoon: And I could imagine how controversial it was at the time. This also turns out to be true for the exoplanets I’m working with.
[TEXT]
Rubin followed a flat curve over the decades until her results were undeniable.
With Kent Ford, she analyzed over 60 galaxies.
Vera Rubin also fought for women all her life.
Wine Burger: So Vera has been a very strong figure in the department over the years. He said that there is no science that cannot be done.
[TEXT]
Despite her lifetime achievements, Vera Rubin has never won a Nobel Prize.
tea spoon: And I was so upset that she hadn’t won a Nobel Prize in her lifetime. But it doesn’t stop there. And there are many other ways to honor people.
[TEXT]
Vera Rubin is the first woman to have an observatory named after her (Vera C. Observatory).
She also received the National Medal of Science.
tea spoon: We encourage curiosity in all, that there are many ways to do science, that there are many approaches to science, and that you are a hardworking, curious, worthwhile and worth investigating. I have a question.
