Bringing to Light Dark Matter: The Story of Vera Rubin
TEN-YEAR-OLD VERA COOPER felt a quiver of excitement when she saw the bedroom she and her older sister, Ruth, would share in their family’s new house in Washington, D.C. Its large window faced north and allowed for a view of the night sky unimpeded by objects and the city’s lights. Vera would be able to observe the stars! She positioned her bed right against the window.
The house’s celestial views would intrigue and delight her and set her off on a lifelong journey to advance astronomy. Vera would eventually explain properties of galaxies and reveal the presence of nonluminous material in the universe called dark matter—a discovery that would fundamentally alter our understanding of the cosmos.
Even as a little girl, Vera had a penchant for gazing up and asking questions. One night as the family drove home from her grandmother’s house, Vera noted that while bushes, trees, and even hills were whooshing by, the moon remained a stationary presence. “Why is that?” she asked her parents. She felt a thrill in simply inquiring about an object in space. (She later learned that because objects far away appear smaller, they cross our line of sight more slowly than those that are closer.)
From her new bedroom at night, Vera would locate the bright North Star, or Polaris.
Found exactly above Earth’s northern axis, it does not seem to change its position in the night sky while Earth
