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Terraforming

Terraforming is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying a planet's atmosphere, temperature, surface topography, or ecology to make it habitable for Earth life. The core challenge is an energy balance problem: enough heat must be retained by the atmosphere to sustain liquid water and breathable pressures at the surface.

tform is a physics-based simulation framework for modelling terraforming processes. It provides a generic planetary state model — tracking how a planet's temperature, pressure, and volatile reservoirs evolve over time under external forcings — and implements planet-specific physics on top of that foundation. Mars is the first and primary target.

Framework design

A planet in tform is described by a state vector of thermodynamic and atmospheric quantities that evolve continuously under physical forcing:

\[ \mathbf{y}(t) = \bigl(T,\; P,\; \ldots\bigr) \]

The framework defines how that state changes — balancing incoming solar radiation, outgoing thermal emission, greenhouse retention, and any engineered interventions — without prescribing the planet-specific constants. Each planet subclass supplies its own orbital parameters, atmospheric composition, and physical constants, while inheriting the integration infrastructure.

Modules

Package Description
src.framework Abstract planet, atmosphere, orbital mechanics base classes
src.celestials Mars implementation — solar flux, climate ODE, polar cap model
src.engine RK4 and fast-path integrators, batched simulation controller
src.interventions GHG compound registry, radiative forcing, injection scheduler