HyperMillennium: Largest-Ever Universe Simulation with 4.2 Trillion Particles

The field of science has just recorded a major breakthrough in understanding the universe’s origins. An international team of scientists led by Chinese researchers has created HyperMillennium, the largest cosmological simulation ever made by humans. This ambitious project allows experts to dissect cosmic evolution in depth through digital replicas within supercomputers.

This breakthrough is not merely a technical achievement but a bridge to solving major mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy. With the ability to rewind the universe’s history, HyperMillennium serves as a vital tool for future observation missions, including China’s space telescopes and the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission.

According to official information from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the simulation is constructed as a giant cube with sides measuring 12 billion light-years. Within it, approximately 4.2 trillion virtual dark matter particles interact with each other.

Using N-body numerical simulation methods, researchers reconstructed the development of large-scale cosmic structures over 10 billion years, starting from the period after the Big Bang. The simulation provides precise insights into how gravity shapes galaxies and cosmic clusters over time.

The success of HyperMillennium is due to the development of specialised software called PhotoNs. This software was specifically designed to optimise the performance of China’s domestic supercomputers to handle massive-scale computations efficiently.

The simulation process requires immense computational resources, including:

Wang Qiao, a researcher from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), emphasised that this technology enables scientists to study extremely rare cosmic structures without losing statistical analysis power. This is crucial as rare objects in the universe often hold the key to solving unresolved physics laws.

Similarly, Professor Mike Boylan-Kolchin from The University of Texas at Austin praised HyperMillennium as an extraordinary achievement in computing. He stated that its unprecedented scale and resolution will serve as a critical reference for the global research community for years to come in uncovering the universe’s initial conditions.

With HyperMillennium, the boundary between sky observations and computer simulations is blurring. Scientists now have a “cosmic laboratory” large enough to contain billions of years of history, offering new hope in solving the universe’s greatest mysteries.