The great female scientist who confirmed the existence of dark matter has died

Astronomer discovered evidence of dark matter, Vera Rubin died Sunday night at the age of 88.

There are only a few days left until 2016 ends, and we just lost one of the greatest scientists today. It was Vera Rubin , who confirmed the self-existence of dark matter. She passed away on Sunday at the age of 88.

She was rejected by Princeton University only because she was a woman.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Rubin collaborated with astronomer Kent Ford, studying the characteristics of spiral galaxies. They discovered something completely unexpected: the outer stars of the galaxy are moving as fast as the central stars, which is inconsistent with Newton's theory of gravitation.

And the explanation here is dark matter.

Young Vera Rubin is working with colleagues.

Adam Frank, an astrophysicist, describes dark matter by comparing it to ghosts in horror movies. You can't see it, but it exists because it disturbs what you can see.

The existence of dark matter was proposed by Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s, but was not confirmed until Rubin conducted his research. Currently, the hypothesis that more than 90% of the universe is dark energy and dark matter, but dark matter is still invisible and mysterious.

In addition to studying groundbreaking dark matter, Vera Rubin is also a strong supporter of women in science . At that time, the lack of women in astrophysics was quite obvious. According to Rubin's profile, she was the only woman graduated in astronomy at Vassar University in 1948.

She was not accepted into Princeton's astronomy program, because the policy did not accept women until 1975. Therefore, she attended a Ph.D. at Cornell and Georgetown at the age of 23, when she had one. child and pregnant with the second child. She was the first woman allowed to observe at Caltech's Palomar Observatory.

Vera Rubin is a strong supporter of women in science.

Rubin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the National Medal of Science, continuously promoting women to be recognized in scientific organizations.

Rubin once wrote: "I live and work with three basic assumptions:

1. There are no problems in science, men can be solved that women can not solve.
2. Half of the world's brains are women.
3. We all need permission to do science, but for deep historical reasons, this permission is more often reserved for men than for women. "

And although a woman has discovered a great mystery, she still appreciates all that is unknown about the universe: "No one is sure that we live in an age that can lighten. expressing the mysteries of the universe The boundaries of the universe are beyond our reach , " she wrote in a preface to a book. "We have looked at a world and found it more mysterious and complicated than we thought. There are still many mysteries of the universe that have not been solved. Those discoveries are waiting for scientists of the future." .