The Cold Dark Matter surface density in a 20-megaparsec-thick slice of the cosmos. One megaparsec (Mpc) is equal to a million parsecs, and one parsec is equal to about 3 light-years. (Image credit: Schaye et al. 2023) Astronomers have unveiled one of the largest cosmological simulation datasets ever created, offering an expansive new tool to explore how the universe evolved across billions of years. Produced by the FLAMINGO project — short for Full-hydro Large-scale structure simulations with All-sky Mapping — the dataset contains more than 2.5 petabytes of data, an amount researchers say is roughly equivalent to half a million HD movies. The sheer scale of the release reflects a growing need in astronomy: matching increasingly precise observations with equally sophisticated theoretical models, according to a statement from the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA).…