by Everything in space – from the earth and the sun to black holes – accounts for only 15% of all matter in the universe. The rest of the cosmos seems to survive an invisible material astronomer that call dark matter.
Astronomers know that dark matter exists because their gravity influences other things like light. But understanding what dark matter is remains an active research area.
With the publication of his first pictures this month, Vera C. Rubin Observatory started a 10-year mission to cover the secret of dark matter. The observatory will continue the legacy of its namesake, a groundbreaking astronomer who has advanced our understanding of the other 85% of the universe.
As a historian of astronomy, I examined how Vera Rubin’s contributions shaped astrophysics. The name of the observatory fits because its data will soon offer scientists a way to build on their work and to lose more light on the dark matter.
Wide view of the universe
From the viewpoint in the Chilean Andes Bergen, the Rubin Observatory documents everything visible in the southern sky. The observatory and its 3,200 megapixel camera will record the sky all three nights.
This camera, about the size of a small car, is the largest digital camera that has ever been built. Images capture an area of the sky about 45 -times as large as the full moon. With a large camera with a wide range of visits, Rubin produces about five petabytes every year. These are MP3 songs worth around 5,000 years.
After weeks, months and years of observations, astronomers will have a time-lapse recording, in which everything that explodes, flashes or moves, flashes or moves, variable stars or asteroids. You will also have the largest survey among galaxies that have ever been carried out. These galactic views are the key to examining dark matter.
Galaxies are the key
Deep -Field pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope and others have visually unveiled the wealth of galaxies in the universe. These images are taken with a long exposure time to collect the light so that even very weak objects appear.
Researchers now know that these galaxies are not randomly distributed. Pull gravity and dark matter and lead them to a structure that resembles the network of a spider or a tub. Rubin Observatory will expand these earlier galactic surveys, which increases the precision of the data and records billions more galaxies.
Dark Matter not only helps to structure galaxies throughout the universe, but also distort the appearance of galaxies by an effect, which is referred to as gravitational lenses.
Light drives through the room in a straight line – unless something massive comes close. Gravity bends the path of light, which distorted as we see it. This gravitational lens effect provides information that could help the astronomers locate dark matter. The stronger the gravity, the greater the bend in the light of the light.
Discover dark matter
For centuries, astronomers pursued and measure the movement of planets in the solar system. They found that all planets were followed by Newton’s movement laws with the exception of Uranus. Astronomers and mathematicians argued if Newton’s laws are true, there must be some missing matter – another massive object – which is drawn to Uranus. From this hypothesis they discovered Neptune and confirmed Newton’s laws.
With the ability to see weaker objects in the 1930s, the astronomers began to pursue the movements of galaxies.
The California Institute for Technology Astronomers Fritz Zwicky shaped the term Dark matter in 1933 after watching galaxies in the Coma cluster. He calculated the mass of the galaxies based on their speeds, which did not match the number of stars he observed.
He suspected that the cluster could contain an invisible, lack of matter that the galaxies did not flee apart. But for a few decades he has been missing enough observation evidence to support his theory.
Enter Vera Rubin
In 1965 Vera Rubin was the first women who were placed in the scientific staff of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC
She worked with Kent Ford, who had built up an extremely sensitive spectrographer and wanted to apply it to a scientific research project. Rubin and Ford used the spectrographer to measure how quickly stars turn around the middle of their galaxies.
In the solar system, in which the majority of the mass in the sun is in the middle, the closest planet, mercury, is moving faster than the most distant planet, Neptune.
“We had expected the stars when they continued to rise from the middle of their galaxy, more slowly and slower,” said Rubin in 1992.
She surprised what they found in Galaxies. The stars that are far from the Galaxy Center moved as quickly as the stars.
“And that really only leads to two options,” said Rubin. “Either Newton’s laws don’t have, and physicists and astronomers are very afraid of this … (or) stars react to the gravitational field of matter that we do not see.”
Data created as ruby after the plot. Her colleagues did not doubt their observations, but the interpretation remained a debate. Many people hesitate to accept that dark matter was necessary to consider the results in Rubin’s data.
Rubin continued to study galaxies and measures how the stars moved. She was not interested in examining the dark matter herself, but she had its impact on the movement of galaxies.
Vera Rubin’s legacy
Today, more people of the observations and contributions from Rubin are aware of our understanding of dark matter. A Congress Act was introduced in 2019 to rename the former large synoptic telescope into Vera C. Rubin Observatory. In June 2025, the US coin published a quarter with Vera Rubin.
Rubin continued to collect data about the movements of galaxies throughout her career. Others have taken up where they have stopped and have contributed to promoting research in dark matter in the past 50 years.
In the 1970s, the physicist James Peebles and astronomers Jeremiah created Ostrtiker and Amos Yahil Computer Simulations. Similar to Zwicky, they concluded that there were no visible affairs in Galaxies to prevent them from flying apart.
They suggested that everything that is dark matter – be it cold stars, black holes or an unknown particle – could be up to ten times as dark matter than ordinary matter in galaxies.
During the 10-year-old run, the Rubin Observatory should give even more researchers the opportunity to expand our understanding of dark matter.
This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Samantha Thompson, Smithsonian Institution
Read more:
Samantha Thompson does not work for a company or an organization that benefits from this article and have not published any relevant affiliations about their academic appointment.
