It was almost midnight of the 1960s morning when Vera Ruben with her colleague Kent ford were tracking some stars and their hot gases which were circling the Andromeda. At the national observatory of Arizona desert Farah and her colleague used to record the gases, chemical fingerprints. They then process all of this information into the photographic plates. The development of these plates would take some time. This was when Ruben used to eat her ice cream cone.
After eating four cones, Ruben could easily make the rotational curve of Andromeda. She was so expert in these that she could easily tell the distance of each cloud of gas on the axis while the speed on the Y axis. At that time astronomers usually thought that the stars which were circling all of the galaxy were acting like planets of the solar system. Just like the planets are circling the Sun the stars are also circling the whole galaxy.
That’s why the stars that were close to the galaxy and its centre, complete their circle around the galaxy faster while the stars that are far away from the galaxy’s centre tend to complete their orbit slowly because the gravitational pool is weak at the far point. So the assumptions of astronomers lie right beyond this point. They thought if the stars are starting their curve then they should start at the high point and fall at the farthest point of distance from the galaxy and its centre.
Rubin on the other hand did not like assumptions. She was more into collecting the data herself even if it does not meet any kind of expectations. At the time of that specific rotational curve, she did not meet the expectations that she was looking for. Even though the curve was flat, the stars which were close or farther, they were both circling around the Andromeda at the same speed.
This is what astronomers are calling ice cream fuelled find. Because of these assumptions and findings the thinking of all of the astronomers completely changed and everything that they knew about the galaxy as well as the universe was going to change. The canvas of the cosmos was completely changed in their imagination.
On that fabric there was another substance which was controlling the speed of the stars. It was first known as the invisible form, but after some time it was named as the dark matter. This is the mystery that we are not understanding until this day. This discovery that Ruben made was not another discovery of some flat rotation and its curves.
It was not this discovery that made her into a legend but how she discovered it. The way she threw herself all in to advocate equality into the world of astronomy is what kept her going without hesitation.