Vera Rubin

Hello. My name is Vera. A long time ago, in the year 1928, I was born. When I was a little girl, I loved looking up at the night sky from my bedroom window. The stars twinkled like tiny diamonds, and I wondered what they were and how they moved. I wanted to learn all of their secrets.

When I grew up, I became a scientist who studies stars. A scientist like me is called an astronomer. In the 1970s, I got to use giant telescopes to look deep into space. I watched faraway star cities, which are called galaxies, twirl and spin. I noticed something very curious. The stars on the outside of the galaxies were moving just as fast as the stars in the middle. That was a big puzzle for me to solve.

I thought about the puzzle for a long time. I realized there must be something invisible in space that we couldn't see. This invisible thing was making the stars move so fast. I decided to give it a name, and I called this invisible stuff 'dark matter'. It was a huge discovery. My discovery helped other scientists understand our amazing universe. I loved spending my life solving the puzzles of the stars.

I lived a long and happy life of 88 years, and I was always looking up at the sky. Today, people remember me for my curiosity. They remember that I helped us learn that the universe is full of wonderful, mysterious things still waiting to be discovered.