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Astronomers were skeptical about dark matter — until Vera Rubin came along

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<p>Vera Rubin didn’t “discover” <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/21537034/dark-matter-unexplainable-podcast">dark matter</a>, but she put it on the map.</p>
<p>Dark matter is a wild concept. It’s 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 community to take it seriously.</p>
<p>That reckoning moment came in 1985, when she stood in front of the International Astronomical Union and walked the audience through some of the data she had collected.</p>
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<p>Her data showed that stars at the edges of multiple galaxies were moving in ways that didn’t make sense, according to the rules of physics. One possible explanation for this strange phenomenon, Rubin suggested, was the existence of a mysterious “dark matter” at the edges of the galaxy. In the decades since that talk, research into dark matter has exploded, revolutionizing astronomy.</p>
<p>In <a data-cdata="{"rewritten_url":"https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Galaxies-Dark-Matter-Beyond/dp/0262046121?ascsubtag=[]vx[p]22340968[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":99,"subtag_delim_length":2,"subtag_key":"ascsubtag","subtag_data":{"ascsubtag":"[]vx[p]22340968[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}" has-subtag="true" href="https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Galaxies-Dark-Matter-Beyond/dp/0262046121"><em>Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond</em></a>, a new biography of Rubin, science journalist Ashley Yeager explains how Rubin, who died in 2016, grew from a young researcher whose bold ideas were initially ignored into the kind of scientist who could change an entire field. In 2020, we interviewed Yeager for <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/21537034/dark-matter-unexplainable-podcast">an episode of the <em>Unexplainable</em> podcast</a> about dark matter. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.</p>
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<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>When did Vera Rubin first get interested in astronomy? What’s her origin story?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>About the age of 11 is when she started to look at the stars. Vera and her sister, Ruth, shared a bedroom in their Washington, DC, townhouse. And Ruth remembers Vera constantly crawling over her at night to be able to open the windows and look out at the night sky and start to track the stars. So clearly, Vera was captivated by the night sky. And that stuck with her.</p>
<p>She then went to Vassar, where she studied astronomy. [While at Vassar, she met a mathematician named Robert Rubin.] They ended up getting married. And that drove one of the biggest decisions in Vera’s life, because she wanted to go to graduate school for astronomy.</p>
<p>She’d gotten into <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/vera-rubin-forced-the-cosmological-theorists-to-think-again-1483110002">Harvard</a>, but Robert Rubin was at Cornell. He was well into his graduate studies. They had to make a choice, and Vera said, “Let’s stay together. I’ll come to Cornell with you and I’ll do my master’s in astronomy while you finish your PhD in physics.”</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>Isn’t that kind of a wild choice? To choose Cornell based on a husband?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>It’s the late 1940s. And Vera, in some ways, was very traditional, even though she was nontraditional in other ways. She felt that she was expected to get married by the end of her four years at Vassar. That was still something that was societally kind of expected.</p>
<p>And I actually think it set her up to be more successful than maybe she would have been, had she gone to Harvard or Princeton or somewhere else, just because of the exposure that she got. There was intellectual freedom she had at Cornell, to be able to probe into different questions in astronomy that she probably would have been pushed away from, had she been in a more structured graduate program.</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>So she’s at Cornell. She’s probing into questions. She’s got a lot of intellectual freedom. What are the big questions that are occupying her mind?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>The biggest one, which becomes her master’s thesis, is really the idea of “Does the universe rotate?”</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>Wait<em>, does</em> the universe rotate?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>So, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/65882-does-the-universe-rotate.html">probably no</a>. This was a question posed by a very eccentric astronomer named George Gamow. Vera’s husband actually showed Vera this paper that George Gamow had written about this idea. And she thought, “Well, why would we not try to answer that question?”</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>The kind of question that, if she were at another university, maybe she wouldn’t have had the freedom to dive into?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>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>
<p>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’s thesis adviser, William Shaw.</p>
<p>He says, “Your conclusion is really good. I want to present it under my name at this upcoming astronomy conference.”</p>
<p>And Vera is like, “No! I might not be a member of this society yet. But you’re not presenting my data for me. I’m going to present it under my own name, come hell or high water.”</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>So does she?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>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>
<p>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, <a href="https://pr.princeton.edu/news/97/q2/0411schw.html">Martin Schwarzschild</a>, who encourages her. He says, “This is really interesting. But we need more data to be able to make this conclusion.”</p>
<p>And that’s 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>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>What happens next?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>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’s this moment in the early 1950s, when she’s at the playground with her son. She had been reading astrophysical journals to stay connected with what was going on in astronomy.</p>
<p>So her son’s playing in the sandbox and she’s 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>
<p>It’s at that point that her husband says, “You need to go back to school. It’s time. We’ll figure out child care. We’ll figure out how to get dinners made. But let’s do it.”</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>So she goes back into astronomy. And eventually she starts doing research at <a href="https://m.espacepourlavie.ca/blogue/en/file/3242">Kitt Peak National Observatory</a>, right? What’s that like?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>We’re talking late 1960s. This is a 84-inch telescope, very large. Vera is at the telescope with Kent Ford, her collaborator. They’re looking at this galaxy called Andromeda, which is our nearest neighbor. They’re looking at these really young, hot stars on the edge of the galaxy, and they’re trying to get the speeds of these stars — how fast are these stars going around Andromeda?</p>
<p>So they’re looking at the data, and they’re going, “Oh my gosh, this is not what we expected.” 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>
<p>The only way for those stars far out in the galaxy to move that fast is [that] there’s got to be something happening out there that we don’t understand.</p>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>What does she think is going on?</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>Well, she’s not really sure. And again, she doesn’t 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>
<p>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, “Okay, we have to deal with this.”</p>
<p>In 1985, Vera Rubin <a href="https://www.iau.org/static/publications/ga_newspapers/19851101.pdf">gives this talk at the IAU</a>. She says, “Nature 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’t understand, and we can’t see it.”</p>
<p>And I think because she did this in so many galaxies — we’re talking 60 galaxies — 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>
<h4>Noam Hassenfeld</h4>
<p>It sounds like if you really want to upend our entire conception of the universe, you have to come with some data.</p>
<h4>Ashley Yeager</h4>
<p>Yeah, absolutely. Because she held onto that criticism of her master’s and PhD work — she would just go after the data, and really make sure that the story she told from that data rang true.</p>
<p>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’t 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>
<p>She basically created more questions than answers, and I think that’s 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>
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22576927/vera-rubin-dark-matter-astronomy-biography">https://www.vox.com/22576927/vera-rubin-dark-matter-astronomy-biography</a>

vox Astronomers were skeptical about dark matter — until Vera Rubin came along

Vera Rubin didn’t “discover” dark matter , but she put it on the map. Dark matter is a wild concept. It’s the idea that some mind-boggling...

Russia Fines Google For Not Deleting Banned Content

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Russia Fines Google For Not Deleting Banned Content" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/k86n0d7s_google-logo_625x300_14_May_21.jpg" title="Russia Fines Google For Not Deleting Banned Content" /></div>
<p class="ins_instory_dv_caption sp_b">Earlier, a Russian court fined Google 3 million roubles for violating personal data law (File)</p>
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<b class="place_cont">Moscow:</b>
<p>Russia on Friday launched administrative proceedings against Facebook's WhatsApp for what it said was a failure to localise data of Russian users on Russian territory, the Interfax news agency reported.</p>
<p>There was no immediate comment from Facebook.</p>
<p>A day earlier, a Russian court fined Alphabet Inc.'s Google 3 million roubles for violating personal data legislation and registered administrative proceedings against Facebook and Twitter for the same offence.</p>
<p>The cases are part of a wider spat between Russia and Big Tech, with Moscow routinely fining social media giants for failing to remove banned content and seeking to compel foreign tech firms to open offices in Russia.</p>
<p>WhatsApp could be fined between 1 million and 6 million roubles ($13,700 to $82,250), Interfax reported, citing court documents. A court date has not yet been set.</p>
<p><i>(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)</i></p>
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source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/russia-fines-google-for-not-deleting-banned-content-2512654">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/russia-fines-google-for-not-deleting-banned-content-2512654</a>

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Earlier, a Russian court fined Google 3 million roubles for violating personal data law (File) Moscow: Russia on Friday launched admini...

Life Returning To A New Normal As Taliban Consolidate Power In Afghanistan

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Life Returning To A New Normal As Taliban Consolidate Power In Afghanistan" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/3tbimuas_taliban-afp_625x300_17_August_21.jpg?im=FitAndFill=(600,400)" title="Life Returning To A New Normal As Taliban Consolidate Power In Afghanistan" /></div>
<p class="ins_instory_dv_caption sp_b">Taliban fighters patrol along a road in Kabul.</p>
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<b class="place_cont">Kabul:</b>
<p>Gone are Western clothes favoured by the fashion-conscious in the Afghan capital, with men on the streets now wearing traditional shalwar kameez.</p>
<p>And there are hardly any women to be seen.</p>
<p>"The fear is there," said a shopkeeper Tuesday, asking not to be named after he opened his neighbourhood provisions store.</p>
<p>Life was returning to a new normal in Kabul as cautious residents ventured out of their homes to see what life would be like under the Taliban following their astonishing return to power at the weekend.</p>
<p>For some, it's as if the last 20 years never happened.</p>
<p>Already there are signs that people are changing the way they live to accommodate the return of the new hardline Islamist regime -- if not by direct order, then at least for self-preservation.</p>
<p>During their first stint in power -- from 1996 until 2001 when they were ousted by the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks -- the Taliban ruled with a strict interpretation of the Koran and sharia law.</p>
<p>A swift whipping across the back of the legs by cadres from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was common for those tardying at prayer times.</p>
<p>Public floggings, amputations of limbs for thieves and even executions were scheduled for Fridays -- sometimes held at the national stadium.</p>
<p>A ban on mixed schools meant most girls could not get an education, and women were barred from working in scenarios where they may have contact with men.</p>
<p>There was no sign Tuesday that such strict measures had been re-introduced -- or even would be -- but people were taking no chances.</p>
<p>"People are scared of the unknown," another shopkeeper said.</p>
<p>"The Taliban are patrolling the city in small convoys. They don't harass people but of course the people are scared."</p>
<p>A sign of the new times was seen on the TV stations that proliferated during the Taliban's absence.</p>
<p>State TV is showing mostly pre-recorded Islamic programmes or announcements from Maulvi Ishaq Nizami -- a man introduced as the head of Voice of Sharia, the Taliban media outlet.</p>
<p>Tolo TV, the private channel which thrived over the past two decades on a mix of Western style game shows, soap operas and talent contests, has stopped most routine programming and is now showing repeats of a Turkish drama about the Ottoman empire.</p>
<p>They did, however, have a newscast with a female presenter interviewing a Taliban official.</p>
<p>On Tuesday the Taliban announced a "general amnesty" for all government officials, and urged them to return to work.</p>
<p>"You should start your routine life with full confidence," the announcement said -- and some appeared to take the advice to heart, with white-capped traffic police re-appearing on the streets for the first time in days, although it was not as busy as usual.</p>
<p>Suhail Shaheen, one of the Taliban's official spokesmen, repeated late Monday that women will not face any threat in the future.</p>
<p>"Their right to education is also protected," he said, but the Taliban have generally been vague in pronouncements on how they would rule Afghanistan, apart from saying it would be in accordance with Islamic principles.</p>
<p>And in one remarkable act of defiance, a handful of women protested briefly outside an entrance to the Green Zone, demanding the right to go back to their jobs as cooks or cleaners for the affluent within.</p>
<p>A truck full of Taliban fighters approached them and tried to shoo them away, but they stayed put until ordinary civilians persuaded them to leave.</p>
<p>Interaction with individual Taliban fighters on the streets has been mixed, however.</p>
<p>"Some have been friendly and give no trouble at all," said a man trying to get to his office past a Taliban checkpoint.</p>
<p>"But others are tough... they push you around and shout at you for no reason."</p>
<p><i>(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)</i></p>
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source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/life-returning-to-a-new-normal-as-taliban-consolidate-power-in-afghanistan-2512642">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/life-returning-to-a-new-normal-as-taliban-consolidate-power-in-afghanistan-2512642</a>

news world Life Returning To A New Normal As Taliban Consolidate Power In Afghanistan

Taliban fighters patrol along a road in Kabul. Kabul: Gone are Western clothes favoured by the fashion-conscious in the Afghan capital,...

Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Statue Vandalised In Pakistan: Report

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Statue Vandalised In Pakistan: Report" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/cofd6m8g_maharaja-ranjit-singh-statue-vandalised-in-pakistan_625x300_17_August_21.jpg" title="Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Statue Vandalised In Pakistan: Report" /></div>
<p class="ins_instory_dv_caption sp_b">The statue was unveiled in June 2019.</p>
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<b class="place_cont">Lahore:</b>
<p>A nine-feet tall cold bronze statue of the first Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh was on Tuesday vandalised by an activist of the banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) at the Lahore Fort in Pakistan's Punjab province, according to media reports.</p>
<p>As per the video that has gone viral, the accused could be seen chanting slogans, breaking the arm of the statue and dismantling Maharaja Ranjit Singh's bust from the horse and throwing it on ground before being pulled by another man.</p>
<p>The TLP activist has been arrested by the Punjab police, the Express Tribune newspaper reported.</p>
<p>The Lahore Fort's administration said that strict action would be taken against the accused.</p>
<p>Reacting to the incident, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary in a tweet said that such "illiterates are really dangerous" for Pakistan's image internationally.</p>
<p>Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Imran Khan on Political Communication Dr Shahbaz Gill said that immediate action will be taken against the accused.</p>
<p>"These are symptoms of a sick mindset. This is an attempt to undermine Pakistan's assessment," he was quoted as saying in the report.</p>
<p>The nine-feet tall statue, made of cold bronze, shows the Sikh emperor sitting on a horse with a sword in hand in complete Sikh attire.</p>
<p>The statue was unveiled in June 2019.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that the statue has been targeted. The arm of the statue was broken in Lahore last year. It was also damaged in August 2019 by two young men, according to Geo News.</p>
<p>Maharaja Ranjit Singh was the founder of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century.</p>
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source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/maharaja-ranjit-singhs-statue-vandalised-in-pakistan-report-2512565">https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/maharaja-ranjit-singhs-statue-vandalised-in-pakistan-report-2512565</a>

news world Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Statue Vandalised In Pakistan: Report

The statue was unveiled in June 2019. Lahore: A nine-feet tall cold bronze statue of the first Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh was on ...

US To Press On With Afghan Evacuations Over Coming Weeks: Pentagon

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="US To Press On With Afghan Evacuations Over Coming Weeks: Pentagon" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/hi31r96c_afghanistankabultalibanreuters650_625x300_17_August_21.jpg" title="US To Press On With Afghan Evacuations Over Coming Weeks: Pentagon" /></div>
<p class="ins_instory_dv_caption sp_b">Pentagon said it's committed to completing this drawdown in a safe and orderly way (File)</p>
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<b class="place_cont">Washington:</b>
<p>The United States is still committed to its drawdown in Afghanistan and will seek to evacuate as many US citizens and Afghan interpreters as possible in coming weeks, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>"We remain committed to completing this drawdown in a safe and orderly way, and to doing what we can to getting as many of our American citizens out as well as many of those interpreters and translators" who assisted US forces, Kirby told MSNBC in an interview.</p>
<p>"We're going to work really hard in the coming weeks to get as many of them out of the country as we can."</p>
<p><i>(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)</i></p>
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source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghanistan-crisis-us-to-press-on-with-afghan-evacuations-over-coming-weeks-pentagon-2512549">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghanistan-crisis-us-to-press-on-with-afghan-evacuations-over-coming-weeks-pentagon-2512549</a>

news world US To Press On With Afghan Evacuations Over Coming Weeks: Pentagon

Pentagon said it's committed to completing this drawdown in a safe and orderly way (File) Washington: The United States is still co...

Russia Hails "Positive Signal" From Taliban

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Russia Hails 'Positive Signal' From Taliban" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/e61bovuk_afghanistantalibanreuters650_625x300_16_August_21.jpg" title="Russia Hails 'Positive Signal' From Taliban" /></div>
<p class="ins_instory_dv_caption sp_b">Russia says Taliban's initial assurances have been a "positive signal" (File)</p>
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<b class="place_cont">Moscow, Russia:</b>
<p>Russia said on Tuesday that the Taliban's initial assurances since completing their military takeover of Afghanistan have been a "positive signal" and that it supports "inclusive" political dialogue in the country.</p>
<p>"I consider it a positive signal that the Taliban in Kabul are declaring and in practice showing their readiness to respect the opinion of others," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.</p>
<p>"In particular, they said that they are ready to discuss a government in which not only they but other Afghan representatives will also participate."</p>
<p>Lavrov told a meeting in Kaliningrad that Moscow wanted the formation of Kabul's new government to be an inclusive process.</p>
<p>"We support the beginning of an inclusive national dialogue with the participation of all of Afghanistan's political, ethnic and religious groups," he said in comments carried by the state-run Rossiya 24 television channel after the meeting.</p>
<p>Russia on Monday said it would decide on recognising the new Taliban government based on how responsibly the new authorities govern.</p>
<p>Its ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov was meeting the Taliban on Tuesday and has said that the militants have already established public order.</p>
<p>The Kremlin has in recent years reached out to the Taliban and hosted its representatives in Moscow several times, most recently last month.</p>
<p>Moscow is closely watching for a potential spillover of the instability into neighbouring ex-Soviet Central Asian countries where Russia maintains military bases.</p>
<p><i>(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)</i></p>
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source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/russia-says-talibans-initial-assurances-positive-signal-2512542">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/russia-says-talibans-initial-assurances-positive-signal-2512542</a>

news world Russia Hails "Positive Signal" From Taliban

Russia says Taliban's initial assurances have been a "positive signal" (File) Moscow, Russia: Russia said on Tuesday that...