The Forming Worlds Lab is an international, interdisciplinary research group at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, led by Tim Lichtenberg. We investigate how rocky planets form, evolve, and become habitable, bringing together planetary science, geophysics, atmospheric physics, and computational modelling. Our research follows terrestrial worlds from their molten magma-ocean beginnings through billions of years of interior and atmospheric evolution, connecting the Solar System's planets to the growing population of observed exoplanets. We develop PROTEUS, an open-source framework that couples interior thermal evolution, volatile outgassing, atmospheric radiative transfer, escape, and stellar evolution into a single self-consistent model. Our work informs the interpretation of exoplanet observations and the search for the conditions that make a planet habitable. We welcome prospective PhD and MSc students, postdocs, and collaborators. Learn more at formingworlds.space.

Forming Worlds Lab

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Forming Worlds Lab

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