Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Vera Rubin, Pioneering Astronomer Who Confirmed Existence of Dark Matter, Dies At 88 (www.cbc.ca)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rest-in-peace dept.

Mikkeles quotes a report from CBC.ca: Vera Rubin, a pioneering astronomer who helped find powerful evidence of dark matter, has died, her son said Monday. She was 88. Vera Rubin found that galaxies don't quite rotate the way they were predicted, and that lent support to the theory that some other force was at work, namely dark matter. Rubin's scientific achievements earned her numerous awards and honors, including a National Medal of Science presented by then-president Bill Clinton in 1993 "for her pioneering research programs in observational cosmology." She also became the second female astronomer to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

5 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Dark Matter is a horrible kludge by digitalride · · Score: 4, Informative

    and Rubin wasn't a huge fan of it either:
    "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances. That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."

    I have high hopes for this new theory that can account for the galaxy rotation problem ( and the emDrive ): http://physicsfromtheedge.blog...

    --
    Open Source is Common Sense: http://groovix.com/
    1. Re: Dark Matter is a horrible kludge by xtal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Science disproves through experiment and fact. Those theories are being experimentally tested, data is being collected, and they are falsifiable. Both are well past the bar for requiring further investigation.

      Shame on YOU.

      --
      ..don't panic
  2. Confirmed Existence? by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When exactly did we confirm the existence of dark matter?

    1. Re:Confirmed Existence? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Informative

      What are you, a dark matter denier? The science is settled - there's consensus! We should now be turning our attention to finding that dark matter.

      Joking aside, Vera Rubin obviously did not confirm the existence of dark matter. That's a terrible headline. She discovered that current mass estimates of the universe could not account for the rotations of galaxies using current models.

      Everything beyond that is just a hypotheses, as no hint of "dark matter" has been found. I have a hunch that nothing will continue to be found until scientists figure out that their mass estimates were way off, or that the models were horribly wrong. Scientific "truths" are always getting clobbered by "ridiculous" new ideas, so it could go either way on this, but I'm betting on our lack of understanding rather than an invisible particle making up most of the mass of the universe.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  3. Re: An Amazing Human by haruchai · · Score: 4, Informative

    And yet there will be fewer posts on here than on the one about the do-nothing space princess.

    Carrie Fisher was an author, playwright and script and public speaker on bipolar disorder and substance abuse.
    I love that cosmological stuff something fierce but none of it has an immediate impact on my daily life whereas I personally know about a dozen with bipolar & dozens more through them

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body