How Scientists Discovered Dark Matter
lNmRHccI4Z8 • 2018-05-30
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Language: en
the first clue came from a Swiss
astronomer named Fritz Zwicky just a few
years after the discoveries that had
suggested the Big Bang is when he
noticed that these newly discovered
galaxies were behaving oddly Fritz
Zwicky looked at clusters of galaxies
and found that the individual galaxies
within those clusters are moving so fast
that the clusters should fly apart
moving around so rapidly that it was
impossible to understand why they didn't
just wander away something clearly held
them in these movements
telescope to explain it so he called the
phenomenon don't la materia translated
as dark matter and then the idea
probably faded away
wiki's observation might have ended up
forgotten and for nearly 40 years
it was until an astronomer named Vera
Rubin entered the field Vera Rubin was
one of these astronomers who was not
appreciated until much later she was a
woman in astronomy at a time when the
field was not particularly friendly to
women the stars at the edge of the
galaxies were moving so fast and they
should have been flung off into space
[Music]
think about a spinning wheel covered in
water if the wheel is moving slowly
Wanek links to the wheel what spin it
fast enough the water flies off same
thing should happen out in the universe
stars swirling around in a galaxy if
they orbit too fast they'll get flung
off out into space
[Music]
except that's not what Vera Rubin sees
the galaxies are spinning fast but the
stars stay in their orbits
what's holding the man it has to be
gravity to respond gravitational fall
from something not right and we don't
know what that is
[Music]
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file updated 2026-02-13 13:01:21 UTC
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