

Competition Shines Light on Dark Matter - datageek
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/06/27/competition-shines-light-dark-matter

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ekanes
Vera Rubin (discovered dark matter) is a close friend of mine. We don't
usually talk about science, but I'm happy to pass along any questions.

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creativeone
I am interested in this generally, and wasn't sure if it was appropriate to
ask, but after reading the wikipedia page about her religious background, I
think its ok, as Vera seems to be an observant Jew. In her opinion, why are
Jews so heavily involved with physics? And why does she think they are so
successful in the field (something like 40% of physics nobels are given to
someone with at lea one Jewish parent. She has clearly given her own family a
strong drive for academics (4 kids, 4 PhDs), I wanted to know if that was the
same for other Jews in her space or some other reason. Sorry I don't have a
more technical question.

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ekanes
I'll ask her about it. I don't think she'd mind the question at all.

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Stormbringer
<http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html>

Has more info on this. Not sure how accurate/up to date the stats are.

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vecter
Anyone with expertise in dark matter care to comment? I love pop physics but I
never got beyond E&M in college

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bugsbunnyak
It's nothing to do with dark matter physics directly. "just" a hard
deconvolution problem: improving the image-analysis of ellipticity in
(telescope) images. Dark matter is inferred from this apparent ellipticity, as
evidence of gravitational lensing.

