July 27, 2014 – Nikolai Kardashev, a Soviet astrophysicist born in 1932, devised a method of rating advanced civilizations. Technological advances, according to Kardashev, could theoretically create conditions where a society could maximize use of energy: first, maximizing the energy striking a planet from its local star; second, maximizing all the energy emitted by a local star, not just that which falls on that civilziation’s planet; third, maximizing the energy derived from all the stars in that civilization’s galaxy; and fourth, maximizing the energy from all the galaxies and intergalactic medium within the entire Universe. He categorized each of these stages as Type 1 through Type 4.
Based on Kardashev’s speculations where does our civilization sit today? We are Type 0, somewhere between 0.7 and 0.72 producing 15 Terawatts of energy, a mere fraction of the energy a Type 1 would harvest from the physical world. The renowned theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, has speculated on Kardashev’s scale and believes humanity will attain Type 1 status within a century or two.
How? Through harnessing of fusion, and antimatter.
To get to Type 2 we will maximize the use of antimatter as an energy source. We will harvest star matter and use it as we see fit. We will no longer be confined to living in proximity to a single star, but to many. We may even build Dyson spheres to encase stars, (see image below), to capture all the energy for the civilization residing within them.
To get to Type 3 we will tap into the energy of black holes and even find the other side, the white holes, that propel matter outwards. By then we will have harnessed the energy of our entire galaxy and spread throughout.
A Type 4 civilization will harness dark and extra-galactic energy. Such a civilization would be unrecognizable to us as such because it would be indistinguishable from the Universe itself. Would we evolve into pure energy? Would a Type 4 civilization be immortal and omnipotent.
So if Kaku is right then here are speculations on human civilization’s evolution.
By 2100 A.D. as Kaku predicts we will approach a Type 1. We will capture all the solar energy that reaches Earth increasing our energy supply by a factor of 100-billion. We will have harnessed nanotechnology and warp drive propulsion and will be a civilization of this world and off this world.
By 2200 A.D., a mere century later we will approach Type 2, harnessing all the energy of our Sun, another 100-billion-fold increase. We will be extra-solar inhabiting planets on many nearby stars.
By 3000 A.D. we will have harnessed the energy of every star in the Milky Way, another 100-billion-fold energy increase. As a Type 3 we will traverse the galaxy and will, along the way, meet many other technologically advanced civilizations.
And then to attain Type 4 we will reach much further into the future, to 12000 A.D. At that point we will have transcended the physical reality of our Universe and may even have poked through to parallel universes in the multiverse.
Sounds delusional? Remember where human civilization’s technological achievements were in 1000 A.D. What would a person living in that time think of the world in which we live today? Magical? Incomprehensible? One thing we know for sure, technological breakthroughs that at one time took a century to achieve, now can happen in a year. It remains true that some technologies are harder to crack, like developing fusion energy. But today we are much closer to achieving that fusion breakthrough that alone will move us faster to becoming a Type 1 civilization. And after that will the rest unfold?
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If we suppose life evolved spontaneously here on Earth, by the same reasoning we must suppose that through similar processes throughout the Milky Way Galaxy life evolved on billions of planets billions of years before life evolved on Earth. Hence billions of years ago there were hundreds of thousands of civilizations that had already advanced to our present level. Yet all of our star’s radiation seems available to our planetary system. The warp drive space aliens are not harvesting it. Fermi’s, “where are they,” argument against the possibility of “warp drives” is extremely persuasive. If warp drives were possible, advanced beings would have been warping all over our galaxy for billions of years, and we would now be watching them on TV. Seems reasonable to infer that the life that evolves naturally in a solar system is bound by the inflexible speed of light limit, hence for all practical purposes solar system life is perpetually bound to the star of its origin. So while a type 0.75 civilization seems possible, forget about the prospects of anything above type 1.
Long before any civilization could consider interstellar travel, technology for virtual realities would have evolved to the point that holo-decks could instantly transport humans to infinities of virtual worlds. Mankind is not going to the stars. Mankind’s technology is going to create and bring the stars to itself.
Please consider taking a look at my post on Centauri Dreams about Kardashev civilizations, “What Kardeshev Really Said” (http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=30255), which considers many of the questions discussed above.
Thank you for both comments. There is no doubt that Kardashev was thinking outside the box in his classification of civilization based on energy spectrum. I find it interesting that he was somewhat ambiguous in defining current civilization as not quite Type 1.
Speculating on the billions of years in which life processes have existed here on our planet Earth, and probably on numerous planets throughout the Milky Way and other galaxies, one would think we would through SETI and other observations have discovered intelligence elsewhere. Maybe it is the physical limit of Einstein’s mathematics that keeps us and other civilizations bound to a finite limit of expansion.
I hope that our other world experiences will not only exist on holodecks.
[…] This article originally appeared on his blog here: https://www.21stcentech.com/humans-achieve-type-1-civilization-2100/ […]
This is good,,,I will try to live until year 2300 or 2500 to see that great civil type human achieved LOL
The current way the international psycho warmongering globalist cabal are dragging us, and everybody being ok with that suicidal tyranny… humans will be extinct by 2100. As for a T1 civilisation… did we ever progress beyond the barbaric medieval age mentality? Humans are too greedy, petty, sadistic and, they love pointless destruction too much for our species to survive much longer.
Hi David, Have we progressed beyond our basic human nature let alone barbaric medieval age mentality? Some of us have. The problem is not everyone of us who call are selves humans, act with humanity. It is interesting that the word “humanity” is derived from “human” when we know that much of what makes us human can be deemed to be undesirable. As for achieving a Type 1 civilization by 2100, my hope is that we finish this century with an Earth that is still recognizable after anthropogenic climate change begins to do its worst.
Hi Len. “Humanity” is an interesting word to launder our basic animal nature. I refer to the medieval period because today we have the same obscene biased system (the only thing that changed was technology): an unnecessary social caste systems, State obsessed ownership of everything (including people, or ‘citizens’, as property to exploit), greedy banking systems that take pleasure in creating poverty and starvation etc., taxes (protection money or else), annexation, hypocritical and undemocratic laws etc., “sanctions” (aka a medieval siege) and general war lust to take other nations resources by force etc. Only to waste said finite world resources on making pollution for overpriced disposable consumer junk, rather than making cleaner fair priced high quality goods that everybody actually needs (and could have).
Bottom line is that we are a group orientated animal species governed by the crazy Alfa tyrant parasites (aka the “elite”). Humans are dumb animals with egotistical delusions of grandure. While we are animals (no escaping that fact), that is no excuse to act like barbaric selfish thugs. We have potential to be better than this but the greedy psycho’s in charge sabotage all the good in society, meanwhile everybody just lets them. If the criminally insane are not removed from power, we are a doomed species. It is a miracle we have made it this far in an age of mass destruction tech. Maybe “The Great Silence” says more about our fate than of aliens ?
As corrupt world politics currently stands, selfish consumerism for a tiny minority’s wealth gain and the rise of antisocial behaviour etc, humans can’t evolve to reach a more advanced form of civilisation never mind a T1. We still have hunger, homelessness and no quality global free healthcare in 2023 !
Climate is always changing regardless of humans, it is the man made pollution and pointless destruction that is the issue. Most people don’t realise that we are still coming out of the last ice age, expect it to get much warmer. We are now entering the solar springtime as the final ice caps melt, hard to believe but Alaska used to be a tropical jungle full of dinosaurs and broadleaf plants !
Polluting the oceans, creating virus weapons and setting off atomic bombs is not a smart move. No advanced civilisation would commit such crazy actions because that would be suicudal for the species.
Ps…
Apologies for the messy reply, I was interrupted several times while trying to type that out. I generally create cleaner responses.