Download the high-resolution image here

Vera Rubin's confirmation of dark matter

On October 11th, 1979, Vera Rubin submitted her most influential paper. She noticed stars rotating around galaxies did not move at the expected rate. They moved much faster than Newtonian physics would allow given the mass of the galaxies. This evidence suggested that either Newtonian gravity does not apply universally or that, conservatively, more than of 50% of the mass of galaxies is contained in the relatively dark galactic halo.

Source: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Directed by Brannon Braga. Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Fox/National Geographic, 2014.

Vera Rubin Dark Matter
Vera Rubin, photo by the American Institute of Physics (left). And Ring of dark matter around ZwCl0024+1652 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (right)
Copyright by American Institute of Physics (left). And NASA, ESA, M.J. Jee and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University) (right)

Back to archive



Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!