- Augustine Pamplany CST
Vera Rubin (1928-2016) was an American astronomer who made ground-breaking contributions to the field of astrophysics, particularly in the study of galaxy rotation rates and the existence of dark matter. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Under the influence of her father, she developed an early interest in astronomy. Rubin earned her Ph.D. in astronomy from Georgetown University in 1954.
Rubin’s most significant contributions came from her meticulous measurements of the velocities of stars and gas clouds within galaxies. She discovered that galaxies did not rotate as predicted by Newtonian physics. Instead, stars in the outer regions of galaxies were moving just as quickly as those closer to the center. It showed that visible mass alone is not enough to account for galactic rotations. Her work provided compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up 26% of the mass in the universe.
Rubin was known to be Jewish and she saw no inherent conflict between her faith and her scientific pursuits. In an interview, Rubin said: “In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I am Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history.” Pope John Paul II appointed her to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996.
True to her scientific engagements with dark matter, she saw dark matter as a metaphor for God. She wrote to a process theologian, “But how about God as Dark Matter? I am not saying God is the same thing as Dark Matter but I am saying God is like Dark Matter in two ways. First, Dark Matter produces no energy of its own… yet it reveals itself only because it pulls on the normal matter around it. And so it is with God. God is a pulling power – a cosmic lure…. Second, Dark Matter is part of the universe but not the whole of it… I can well imagine God as a womb-like environment comprising five-sixths of the universe with the visible world as another sixth. On this view we live and move and have our being in the larger context of a lovingly Dark Matter.”
An unconventional string of her idea of God is that she saw God as both light and darkness: “I am wondering if this Love (God) doesn’t have a darkness to it, a womb-like and nurturing embrace for which Dark Matter might be a metaphor. A holy Blackness.” Just as black absorbs all colours, she saw God as a metaphor that contain all possibilities of the world. “I find myself drawn to God as Light and God as Darkness. God as a deep Black who contains all the colours in different ways: as potentialities and as actualities.”
Her life’s work in astrophysics and her dedication to understanding the mysteries of the cosmos exemplify the pursuit of knowledge and the exploration of the universe, which can resonate with both scientific and religious perspectives.
