Ultra-Large FLAMINGO Simulations Build a Virtual Universe the Size of 500,000 HD Movies

Astronomers released the FLAMINGO project, one of the largest cosmological simulation datasets ever created, totaling over 2.5 petabytes and designed to model dark matter, baryons, and dark energy across cosmic time. Publicly accessible, the virtual universes help researchers study large-scale structure and galaxy formation, test competing cosmological models, and explore rare objects like massive clusters—aimed at accelerating interpretation of upcoming observations. The data release was submitted to Astronomy & Computing and is available via arXiv.