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Nikkei Science in English
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN April 2022
The identity of dark matter narrowed down by astronomical observations
| By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | C. Prescod-Weinstein |
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| How do you think the dark matter problem is solved?” Vera C. Rubin urgently asked me, within minutes of being introduced at a 2009 Women in Astronomy conference. To this day, I can’t remember what I said in response. I was awestruck: the famed astronomer who had won the National Medal of Science for her work finding the first conclusive evidence for dark matter’s existence was asking me, a twentysomething Ph.D. student, for my opinion. I am certain that whatever I came up with was not very good because it was a problem that I had, until that moment, given no serious thought to. Until Rubin asked me my opinion, it had never occurred to me that I was entitled to have an opinion on the question at all. | “How do you think we can solve the dark matter problem?” Vera C. Rubin asked me. It was a few minutes after I was introduced to her at the 2009 Women in Astronomy Conference. I can’t remember how I answered now. I was awed. A renowned astronomer, who has been awarded the National Medal of Science for discovering conclusive evidence for the existence of dark matter, asked me, a doctoral student in his twenties, for my opinion. I had never seriously considered the dark matter problem until that moment, so whatever answer I came up with would not have been a very good one. I didn’t even consider myself entitled to have an opinion on such an issue in the first place until Rubin asked me for it. |
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| If I disappointed her with my answer, she didn’t show it. Instead she asked me to sit down to lunch with her and some other women astronomers, including former NASA administrator Nancy Grace Roman. Rubin then proceeded to fangirl over Roman, who is often referred to as “the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” It was quite a moment for me, to watch an elderly woman who had uncovered one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time excitedly introduce us to her own hero. | Rubin may have been disappointed by my answer, but he didn’t show it. Instead, he invited me to lunch with another female astronomer. Among them was Nancy Grace Roman, the chief astronomer at NASA. Rubin then showed the side of himself as an avid fan of Roman, who is often called the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” It was a memorable moment for me to watch the elderly woman who uncovered one of the greatest mysteries of modern science excitedly introduce her idol. | |
| Rubin cemented her legacy in the 1960s, when she studied stars inside galaxies and found something odd: stars on the outskirts of galaxies were moving faster than they were supposed to, as if there was an invisible matter there contributing a gravitational pull. Her work echoed findings from galaxy cluster studies in the early 1930s by Fritz Zwicky, which had led him to suggest the existence of Dark matter, German for “dark matter.” Throughout the 1970s Rubin and astronomer Kent Ford published data consistent with this conclusion, and by the early 1980s scientists were in widespread agreement that physics had a dark matter problem. | It was in the 1960s that Rubin made his mark. At the time, Rubin was studying the stars in the galaxy and noticed something strange. He was moving faster than the stars outside the galaxy were thought to be. It was as if there was an invisible substance in the galaxy that exerted a gravitational pull on the stars. Rubin’s work builds on the work of Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s on clusters of galaxies. From this work, Zwicky proposed the existence of “dunkrematelier” (German for “dark matter”). Rubin and astronomer Kent Ford continued to publish data consistent with Zwicky’s theory throughout the 1970s. And by the early 1980s it was a common view among scientists that physics had a dark matter problem. |
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