Studying the Early Universe with Macs

Profiles in Success: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Some of Europe’s top scientists are harnessing the Mac’s power and graphics capabilities to help explain the structure and evolution of the universe. This unique research project, based at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, involves processing signal data from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) — radiation believed to have been caused by the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. Signal processing methodologies used in the research will be invaluable in other areas of science, such as neurology.

Thanks to EPFL’s recognition as an Apple Research & Technology Support (ARTS) Laureate, the project’s hardware and software requirements are being partially met by the ARTS programme.

“The great thing is that Macs enable us to number crunch huge data sets, create high-quality graphic simulations, and then embed those graphics in presentations — which is vital in a multidisciplinary research project like this”, explains Professor Pierre Vandergheynst. “Being able to do it all on the Mac will reduce the time it takes to present our data from about a week to a day”.

One of Europe’s top science research institutions, EPFL has a campus of more than 10,000 students and staff located on the shores of Lake Geneva. It has three missions: education, research and technology transfer at the highest international level.

The Signal Processing Institute (ITS) in EPFL’s School of Engineering is an eminent research and teaching centre, with a US$4m research budget funded exclusively from external sources through contracts with government and industry.

Worldwide Collaboration

The CMB research run by Professor Vandergheynst at ITS is one of the most important international initiatives in signal processing. It involves worldwide collaboration, most notably with physicists at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Santander in Spain.

Professor Vandergheynst explains why CMB holds key information about the universe: “The very hot early universe was fully opaque, as matter and radiation were in thermodynamic equilibrium inside a unique plasma. However, some 400,000 years after Big Bang, the cooling of the plasma decoupled the radiation. Today, we can study this primordial snapshot of the universe, the so-called Cosmic Microwave Background. It means we can go back in time and probe the structure and the evolution of the universe”.

“It’s a unique signal to play with”, he continues, “helping us question, for example, the existence of dark matter and dark energy — matter and content that seem to be in the universe. We can’t detect them directly, but there are indirect effects that suggest their existence, and an imprint in the signal should clarify the debate”.

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