From The University of Waterloo (CA)
5.1.24
Moving one step closer to understanding mysteries at the edge of the universe.
A group of researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia have discovered a potential “cosmic glitch” in the universe’s gravity, explaining its strange behaviour on a cosmic scale.
For the last 100 years, physicists have relied upon Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to explain how gravity works throughout the universe. General relativity, proven accurate by countless tests and observations, suggests that gravity impacts not simply three physical dimensions but also a fourth dimension: time.
“This model of gravity has been essential for everything from theorizing the Big Bang to photographing black holes,” said Robin Wen, the lead author on the project and a recent Waterloo Mathematical Physics graduate.
“But when we try to understand gravity on a cosmic scale, at the scale of galaxy clusters and beyond, we encounter apparent inconsistencies with the predictions of general relativity. It’s almost as if gravity itself stops perfectly matching Einstein’s theory. We are calling this inconsistency a ‘cosmic glitch’: gravity becomes around one per cent weaker when dealing with distances in the billions of light years. “
For more than twenty years, physicists and astronomers have been trying to create a mathematical model that explains the apparent inconsistencies of the theory of general relativity. Many of those efforts have taken place at Waterloo, which has a long history of cutting-edge gravitational research resulting from ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration between applied mathematicians and astrophysicists.
“Almost a century ago, astronomers discovered that our universe is expanding,” said Niayesh Afshordi, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Waterloo and researcher at the Perimeter Institute.
“The farther away galaxies are, the faster they are moving, to the point that they seem to be moving at nearly the speed of light, the maximum allowed by Einstein’s theory. Our finding suggests that, on those very scales, Einstein’s theory may also be insufficient.”
The research team’s new model of a “cosmic glitch” modifies and extends Einstein’s mathematical formulas in a way that resolves the inconsistency of some of the cosmological measurements without affecting existing successful uses of general relativity.
“Think of it as being like a footnote to Einstein’s theory,” Wen said. “Once you reach a cosmic scale, terms and conditions apply.”
“This new model might just be the first clue in a cosmic puzzle we are starting to solve across space and time,” Afshordi said.
The study appears in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
See the full article here .
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In just half a century, the The University of Waterloo (CA) located at the heart of Canada’s technology hub, has become a leading comprehensive university with nearly 36,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs.
Consistently ranked Canada’s most innovative university, Waterloo is home to advanced research and teaching in science and engineering, mathematics and computer science, health, environment, arts and social sciences. From quantum computing and nanotechnology to clinical psychology and health sciences research, Waterloo brings ideas and brilliant minds together, inspiring innovations with real impact today and in the future.
As home to the world’s largest post-secondary co-operative education program, Waterloo embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research, and commercialization. With campuses and education centres on four continents, and academic partnerships spanning the globe, Waterloo is shaping the future of the planet.
The University of Waterloo is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on 404 hectares (998 acres) of land adjacent to “Uptown” Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates three satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges. The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and thirteen faculty-based schools. Waterloo operates the largest post-secondary co-operative education program in the world, with over 20,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the university’s co-op program. Waterloo is a member of the U15 – group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The institution originates from the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, established on 4 April 1956; a semi-autonomous entity of Waterloo College, which was an affiliate of The University of Western Ontario (CA). This entity formally separated from Waterloo College and was incorporated as a university with the passage of the University of Waterloo Act by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1959. It was established to fill the need to train engineers and technicians for Canada’s growing postwar economy. It grew substantially over the next decade, adding a faculty of arts in 1960, and the College of Optometry of Ontario (now the School of Optometry and Vision Science), which moved from Toronto in 1967.
The university is a co-educational institution, with approximately 36,000 undergraduate and 6,200 postgraduate students enrolled. Alumni and former students of the university can be found across Canada and in over 150 countries; with a number of award winners, government officials, and business leaders having been associated with Waterloo. Waterloo’s varsity teams, known as the Waterloo Warriors, compete in the Ontario University Athletics conference of the U Sports.
Twentieth century
The University of Waterloo traces its origins to Waterloo College (present-day Wilfrid Laurier University), the academic outgrowth of Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, which was affiliated with the University of Western Ontario since 1925. When Gerald Hagey assumed the presidency of Waterloo College in 1953, he made it his priority to procure the funds necessary to expand the institution. While the main source of income for higher education in Ontario at the time was the provincial government, the Ontario government made it clear it would not contribute to denominational colleges and universities.
Hagey soon became aware of the steps undertaken by McMaster University to make itself eligible for some provincial funding by establishing Hamilton College as a separate, non-denominational college affiliated with the university. Following that method, Waterloo College established the Waterloo College Associate Faculties on 4 April 1956, as a non-denominational board affiliated with the college. The academic structure of the Associated Faculties was originally focused on co-operative education in the applied sciences—largely built around the proposals of Ira Needles. Needles proposed a different approach towards education, including both studies in the classroom and training in industry that would eventually become the basis of the university’s co-operative education program. While the plan was initially opposed by the Engineering Institute of Canada and other Canadian universities, notably the University of Western Ontario, the Associated Faculties admitted its first students in July 1957.
On 25 January 1958, the Associated Faculties announced the purchase of over 74 hectares (180 acres) of land west of Waterloo College. By the end of the same year, the Associated Faculties opened its first building on the site, the Chemical Engineering Building.
“The greatest product which we will realize from our electronic era is the better educated race. This applies to all fields – not just the field of science.”
— Ira Needles, 1956
In 1959, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario passed an act which formally split the Associated Faculties from Waterloo College, and re-established it as the University of Waterloo. The governance was modeled on the University of Toronto Act of 1906, which established a bicameral system of university government consisting of a senate, responsible for academic policy, and a board of governors exercising exclusive control over financial policy and having formal authority in all other matters. The president, appointed by the board, was to act as the institution’s chief executive officer and act as a liaison between the two groups.
The legislative act was the result of a great deal of negotiation between Waterloo College, Waterloo College Associated Faculties, and St. Jerome’s College, another denominational college in the City of Waterloo. While the agreements sought to safeguard the two denominational colleges, they also aimed at federating them with the newly established University of Waterloo. Due to disagreements with Waterloo College, the college was not formally federated with the new university. The dispute centred on a controversially worded section of the University of Waterloo Act, 1959, in which the college interpreted certain sections as a guarantee it would become the Faculty of Art for the new university. This was something the Associated Faculties were not prepared to accept. As a result of the controversy, Waterloo College’s entire Department of Mathematics broke from the college to join the newly established University of Waterloo, later joined by professors from the Economic, German, Modern Languages, and Russian departments. Despite this controversy, until 1960 Hagey hoped for a last-minute compromise between Waterloo College and the university. Ultimately, however, the university created its own Faculty of Arts in 1960. It later established the first Faculty of Mathematics in North America on 1 January 1967. In 1967, the world’s first department of kinesiology was created. The present legislative act which defines how the university should be governed, the University of Waterloo Act, 1972 was passed on 10 May 1972.
In February 1995, the former president of the university, James Downey, signed the Tri-University Group (TUG) agreement between Wilfrid Laurier University, and The University of Guelph. Signed in a period of fiscal constraint, and when ageing library systems required replacing, the TUG agreement sought to integrate the library collections and services of the three universities.
Twenty-first century
In 2001, the university announced it would develop the Waterloo Research and Technology Park in the north campus. The park was planned to house many of the high-tech industries in the area, and is supported by the university, the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, the provincial and federal governments, and Canada’s Technology Triangle. The aim was to provide businesses with access to the university’s faculty, co-operative education students, and alumni, as well as the university’s infrastructure and resources. Groundbreaking was on 25 June 2002, with the first completed building, the Sybase campus building, opening on 26 November 2004. In 2010, the Waterloo Research and Tech Park was renamed as the David Johnston Research and Technology Park, after David Johnston, the 28th Governor General of Canada and former president of the university.
From 2009 to 2012, the university managed four undergraduate programs in Dubai. The university worked in partnership with the Higher Colleges of Technology, the largest post-secondary institution in the United Arab Emirates. Discussions regarding the partnership emerged in 2004, and the Dubai campus was officially opened in September 2009. Through the partnership, the university offered undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering, civil engineering, financial analysis and risk management, and information technology management. The programs offered in Dubai took place in facilities provided by the Higher Colleges of Technology. On 30 October 2012, the university’s Board of Governors decided to close the university’s extension in Dubai.
The university also includes three semi-autonomous affiliated colleges and a federated university. Conrad Grebel University College is a Mennonite university college that was chartered in 1961 and is religiously affiliated with the Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. Renison University College is an Anglican university college chartered in 1959; it entered an affiliation with the University of Waterloo in 1960 and is religiously affiliated with the Anglican Church of Canada. St. Jerome’s University is a Roman Catholic university, founded in 1865, which entered into a federation with the University of Waterloo shortly after the provincial government granted it university status in 1959. United College is a university college founded by members of the United Church of Canada in 1962. However, United now operates independently from the United Church, without any formal or legal relationship.
The three colleges and federated university are all within the University of Waterloo’s main campus and operate their own residences. Students of these affiliated colleges and federated university are also academically integrated with the University of Waterloo. Students who study at any of them are also considered registered students of the University of Waterloo; with students from the federated universities able to enroll in classes and faculties, and graduate as a student from the University of Waterloo. Regardless of the affiliated colleges and federated university’s religious affiliations, enrollment is not restricted based on the student’s religious beliefs.
Waterloo is a publicly funded research university, and a member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. It functions on a term-based system, with fall, winter and spring terms. Undergraduate programs comprise the majority of the school’s enrollment, made up of over 25,000 full-time and part-time undergraduate students. The university is organized into six faculties, which operate a combined total of thirteen schools and over fifty academic departments.
Financial aid available to students includes the Ontario Student Assistance Program and Canada Student Loans and Grants through the federal and provincial governments. The financial aid provided may come in the form of loans, grants, bursaries, scholarships, fellowships, debt reduction, interest relief, and work programs.
The university has also partnered with other institutions for the purposes of jointly operating a graduate program. The Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) is a graduate school and research centre operated in partnership with the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Wilfrid Laurier University. The Perimeter’s Scholar International program is another graduate program operated in partnership with The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in which its graduates receive a Master of Science from the University of Waterloo. The university also offers its students the opportunity to earn credits towards their degree while studying abroad through student exchange and international internship programs. The university has exchange agreements with over 100 institutions outside Canada.
In the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the university ranked very highly in the world and in Canada. The QS World University Rankings ranked the university very highly in the world and in Canada. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed Waterloo very highly in the world and in Canada. In The U.S. News & World Reportranking, the university placed very highly in the world and in Canada, tied with The University of Ottawa [Université d’Ottawa](CA).
In terms of national rankings, Maclean’s university rankings ranked Waterloo very high in the magazine’s comprehensive university category. The university also placed very high in Maclean’s reputational survey of Canadian universities.
The university also placed very highly in a number of rankings that evaluated a graduate’s employment prospects. In QS’s graduate employability ranking, Waterloo ranked very highly in the world, and in Canada. In the Times Higher Education graduate employability ranking, Waterloo was ranked very highly in the world and in Canada. In an employability survey published by The New York Times, when CEOs and chairpersons were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, the university placed very highly in the world and in Canada. A study from Riviera Partners found that the University of Waterloo had a very high rank in hired undergraduate candidates in Silicon Valley. Startup Compass found that University of Waterloo alumni were very frequently hired in small and medium-sized companies in Silicon Valley. Dr. Steven Woods, engineering director at Google in Canada, said that “the University of Waterloo is one of Google’s largest three or four recruiting universities year-over-year [worldwide], along with The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University.” Business Insider found via LinkedIn data that the University of Waterloo has a very high count of alumni working at Facebook, and at Amazon.
The University of Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group that represents 15 Canadian research universities. Research Infosource has ranked Waterloo very highly on their list of top 50 Canadian research universities, with a sponsored research income (external sources of funding) of over $200 million. In the same year, the university’s faculty averaged a sponsored research income of $163,100, while graduate students averaged a sponsored research income of $34,700. Research funds comes from private, and public sources. The university has recently received over C$15 million in research funding from Huawei.
Waterloo’s research performance has been noted several bibliometric university rankings, which uses citation analysis to evaluates the impact a university has on academic publications. The Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities ranked Waterloo very highly in the world and in Canada. The University Ranking by Academic Performance rankings placed the university very highly in the world and in Canada.
The university operates and manages 41 research centres and institutes, including the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research, the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing, the Institute for Quantum Computing, and the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience. Official recognition and designation of all centres and institutes requires the approval of the university’s Senate. On 6 April 2018, the University of Waterloo announced the launching of its Artificial Intelligence Institute.
The university has undertaken several research partnerships with other institutions. In 2007, the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) was established as a graduate school and research centre in partnership with the University of Waterloo. BSIA operates three research centres relating to public governance and public policy. In 2016, Facebook hardware development division announced a partnership with Waterloo, along with 16 other post-secondary institutions, as Facebook explores new revenue streams in virtual reality, cyber security, and other areas of research. In 2019, Microsoft announced a partnership with Waterloo’s Artificial Intelligence Institute worth $115 million over five years as part of Microsoft’s broader AI For Good Initiative. Waterloo’s Artificial Intelligence Institute is an interdisciplinary initiative involving the researchers from faculties of arts, engineering, mathematics, and computer science.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology worked in collaboration with SiO2 Innovation Labs to develop a coating that kills the virus upon impact. The antiviral coating could be applied to all personal protective equipment and high-touch surfaces. This research was supported by both the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Mitacs. The school also received a $499,935 grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Immunization Partnership Fund to engage health care professionals and community leaders to combat COVID-19 misinformation and increase acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines.
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