Astronomers from the Low Countries have launched FLAMINGO, a cosmological simulation project that studies the evolution of the Universe.

The FLAMINGO project, developed by astronomers at the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA), represents one of the most extensive cosmological simulations ever conducted, generating over 2.5 petabytes of data, equivalent to 500,000 HD movies. Its purpose is to help researchers unravel the evolution of the cosmos over billions of years. FLAMINGO, an acronym for 'Full-hydro Large-scale structure simulations with All-sky Mapping', allows for the comparison of precise observations from modern telescopes with complex theoretical models. The simulations start from post-Big Bang conditions and track the formation of galaxies and cosmic structures. A distinctive aspect of FLAMINGO is its ability to simultaneously model dark matter, ordinary matter, and the effects of dark energy. The project will become an essential tool for interpreting data from future telescopes, and the dataset will be made available to the international scientific community, facilitating global collaboration and progress in modern astronomy.