The European Space Agency’s Euclid Consortium has unveiled Flagship 2, the largest and most detailed simulation of the universe to date. This digital model includes 3.4 billion galaxies and tracks the gravitational interactions of over 4 trillion particles, providing scientists with a virtual universe to analyse data from the Euclid space telescope.
Flagship 2 was developed using an algorithm created by University of Zurich astrophysicist Joachim Stadel. In 2019, he used the Piz Daint supercomputer, then the world’s third most powerful, to generate this highly detailed virtual universe.
“These simulations are crucial for preparing the analysis of Euclid’s data,” said astrophysicist Julian Adamek of UZH, a collaborator on the project.
What is the Euclid Space Telescope?
Launched by the European Space Agency in July 2023, the Euclid space telescope orbits 1.5 million kilometres from Earth at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2. Its mission is to explore dark matter and dark energy by capturing detailed images of billions of galaxies and tracking their movement and clustering. Understanding these cosmic phenomena will help scientists figure out why the universe’s expansion is accelerating.
Comparing Euclid’s observations with Flagship 2 simulations will allow researchers to test and refine current models of the universe. While the simulation is based on the standard cosmological model, the team expects the mission to potentially reveal surprises and rare cosmic events.
“We can see how the universe expanded at that time and measure whether this constant really remained constant,” said Adamek. He also noted that because Euclid observes such a vast region, it has a high chance of detecting rare or unexpected phenomena.
Euclid’s first observational dataset, Quick Euclid data release 1 (Q1), was released on March 19, 2025. The next major data release, Data Release 1 (DR1), is scheduled for October 21, 2026. Scientists will use Flagship 2 to prepare for and interpret these upcoming observations.
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