Can we become a Type 1 civilisation?
Our Journey Of Becoming An Advanced Civilisation
Humans like Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne were far ahead of their times. Their designs of the helicopter, and parachute, predicting the nature of the moon landing, even predicting the site Cape Canaveral, and the exact number of astronauts in the flight give us evidence of their foresight. They were able to get profound insights into the future. When talking about foresight, there’s a question in the scientific community that hasn’t been addressed yet.
The question says, “Is there any alien civilisation?” This five-word question entirely changed the way humans think. In turn, it produced a chain reaction — “of questions”. Solving these questions we were able to think like advanced civilisations.
Advancement, that’s the word that comes to one’s mind when thinking in terms of progress. You might have used this word in your day-to-day lives frequently. But, what would be a civilisation’s advancement?
Can we measure a civilisation’s advancement levels?
— Yes, we can. There’s a scale specially designed for this purpose. It’s called Kardashev scale. It’s a means that is used to measure the progress of a civilisation. Presently, we’re dependent upon a limited number of items in terms of energy utilisation. The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancements based on the amount of energy at its disposal. The scale is hypothetical and regards energy consumption on a cosmic scale.
Types of civilisation:
This concept was put forward by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. He proposed a scale to find out about the technological advancement of a civilisation. The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilisation’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use.
It divides the civilisation’s advancement into three divisions. These civilisations are as follows:
- A Type I civilisation, (also called a planetary civilisation) can use and store all of the energy available on its planet.
- A Type II civilization, (also called a stellar civilisation) can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system.
- A Type III civilisation, (also called a galactic civilisation), can control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy.
This topic has been covered in the article given below. We recommend reading the given article for clarity.
Now the scale has been upgraded by other astronomers and includes more than Type III civilisation.
We can’t even imagine what would humanity feel like being a Type III civilisation. Why?
— because we’re not even a Type I civilisation yet. But one thing is for sure, these civilisations would unlock the potential that humans never even thought of.
In this article, we’re going to discuss Type I civilisation. What would it feel like being a Type I civilisation.
Currently, the world’s population consumes 15 terawatts of power from a combination of these energy sources.
Type I civilizations are able to use all the energy available on their home planet (we’re approaching this; most scientists agree that we are currently at a 0.7 on the Kardashev scale, with a full Type I being about a century off).
Fuel needed to become a Type 1 civilisation
In terms of becoming a Type 1 civilisation, we’ll need two types of energy — Nuclear energy and Space Solar Power.
Fission and fusion power. More weightage is given to fusion power to achieve the status of Type 1 civilisation.
The second method to unleash energy is — Space-based solar power — which dominates surface-based solar power and other renewable resources.
We can’t attain technological advancement with the limited amount of fuel that we’ve at our disposal like coal, petroleum products, etc. These products aren’t replenishable. We need an unlimited amount of energy which can’t become a reality if we’ll use the conventional sources of energy. And there is a pollution-related problem while using the conventional sources of energy. We will probably need sources of fuel like
Nuclear fission — Nuclear fission involves the splitting of atoms to release the binding energy of the atomic nuclei. As the process uses uranium rather than fossil fuels to generate heat, there are no carbon emissions with the nuclear fission process.
Nuclear Fusion
Fusion produces more energy than fission. For a becoming a Type 1 civilisation, we’ll have to tap the fusion energy. Nuclear fusion is the process of combining atomic nuclei rather than splitting them (as with fission) to produce energy. This process occurs naturally in the center of stars like the Sun and creates no long-term radioactive waste or greenhouse gases.
Fusion power unleashes the potential nuclear energy of our sun. The natural power source of our universe is found in the form of the hydrogen atom. Till now, it’s the only source of energy that can open up 10 million times the present energy.
Present Fusion Projects — International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) — a project of many nations. Another project is National Ignition Facility (NIF). But to become an advanced civilisation we’ll need stronger versions of these projects — that would utilise the energy in a more efficient manner.
Problems associated with fusion
There are many advantages of using fusion power but there are also some disadvantages too. These disadvantages include:
- Cumbersome process — Fusion needs more energy to accomplish than fission does. The energy required for fusion has been a barrier to its widespread use for energy generation.
- A great technological advancement is required which isn’t possible yet. It’s a difficult process to recreate, control and is extremely expensive.
Advantages of Nuclear fusion
There are many advantages of using fusion power as a source of energy. These include:
- Minimal Pollution — it’s clean energy
- Fusion plants are safer as compared to fission plants( as they can’t suffer a catastrophic meltdown)
Space Solar Power
It’s a revolution in terms of utilising energy. It consists of satellites in geostationary orbit. The function of these satellites is to absorb radiation from our sun and direct it down to our planet in the form of microwave radiation. Space has roughly ten times more sunlight than is available on the surface of the earth. Moreover, the energy is clean, carbon-free, and continuous.
You might think, “It’s not possible!” But it’s possible even today according to Physics. But the problem is that the process is too costly to implement.
Recent Research — A Tokyo-based Japan Space Systems announced that by the year 2025, it’ll test a space solar power system that makes use of satellite to collect the sun’s energy, and send it back to earth.
Even UK has come forward with its own proposal for a space solar satellite by 2040.
Similarly, when talking about utilising the energy of the sun, the name Dyson Sphere comes to mind. It’s a hypothetical concept.
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output.
Some of the characteristics of this type of civilisation are:
There are many features of the Type 1 civilisation. Some of them have been mentioned below:
- Ability to completely control the home planet, its weather systems, and its moon/moons.
- Fusion and fission energy is common and with globally-linked solar, wind, and ocean wave power, energy is cheap. This completely resolves the problem of the Earth running out of fossil fuels which have become extremely expensive. Hydrogen and biofuels replace expensive oil. Space-based solar power becomes common and takes care of the global energy demand via wireless power transmission and beamed energy. Hydrogen-based fission, fusion, solar power, and renewables largely replace fossil fuels.
- Advances in other fields of science like longevity science, slow the aging process so that the dominant species can live 200+ years.
- Ability to move asteroids and Near Earth Objects away from Earth to prevent collisions, or towards Earth and mine them.
- Disposal of waste into gas giants with habitats in place.
Problems
There are many problems associated with technological advancement. The most prominent problems are pollution, climate change, pollution, and many more.
- Climate change — The thickness of the Arctic ice sheet has decreased by half in the past five decades. The same is the case of Greenland and Antarctica(in 2002, a large mass of Thwaites Glacier broke off, and a similar thing happened with the iceberg A-76 in the year 2021). Temperature variations would become frequent with such technological progress as the emissions will increase manifolds. It will increase the pace of droughts, floods, widespread fires, etc.,
According to IPCC, a major chunk of global warming is driven by human activity especially the production of carbon dioxide.
- Diseases— climate change isn’t the only result, there are other dangers that come associated like migrating of diseases from one part of the world to another. For example — tropical diseases are migrating northwards due to the heating of our planet — example: West Nile Virus.
- Pollution — There is a direct relation between technological progress and pollution. For instance, air pollution occurs when harmful or excessive quantities of gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, and methane are introduced into the earth’s atmosphere. The main sources of all these are related to technologies that emerged following the industrial revolution such as the burning of fossil fuels, factories, power stations, mass agriculture and vehicles.
There are other problems associated with technological advancements like the problem of resource depletion, and many more. Furthermore, some scientists believe that the transition from Type 0 to Type I might be a risky task as it could lead to self-destruction. There would no longer be room for further expansion on the civilization’s home planet, as in a Malthusian catastrophe. Excessive use of energy without adequate heat disposal, for example, could change the life of flora and fauna of earth and make the planet of a civilization approaching Type I unsuitable to the biology of the dominant life-forms and their food sources. Taking Earth as an example, its sea temperatures would change and would disrupt marine life and make the cooling of mammals to temperatures suitable for their metabolism difficult if not impossible.
Fermi Paradox — It says, there are billions of stars in our milky way galaxy — some of these stars must have Earth-like planets — some of them must have been much older than our sun — so they may have evolved intelligent life millions of years back — some of them may have explored ways of interstellar travel — so the earth must have been visited by those interstellar beings long ago — there is no solid proof of the argument.
Great Filter Theory
There’s a theory that says it isn’t possible for a civilisation to progress beyond a certain level or stage. This theory is called the Great Filter Theory. If there is some possibility of the resolution of the Fermi paradox then it’s hidden in the Great Filter. It posits that in the development of life from the earliest stages to reach the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there exists a hidden barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life rare.
For some scientists, there exist two possibilities concerning the Great Filter — it’s either behind us or in front of us.
In case, it’s behind us, scientists have speculated that it may have occurred at the creation of life itself or at the jump from single-cell prokaryotes to multicellular eukaryotes. Either way, it implies that we are a rare case and that communication isn’t happening because we’re one of very few, if any, survivors.
On the other hand, if the Great Filter is ahead of us, then we’re not receiving communication only because advanced civilizations have hit the wall and ceased to exist — implying that the same fate would be to our civilisation and we too will hit that wall eventually.
Some scientists believe :
“There is no known way for human civilization to use the equivalent of the Earth’s total absorbed solar energy without completely coating the surface with human-made structures, which is not feasible with current technology. However, if a civilization constructed very large space-based solar power satellites, Type I power levels might become achievable — these could convert sunlight to microwave power and beam that to collectors on Earth.”
Some scientists have come up with other explanations for the literal radio silence in space. Some of the scientists believe that most of the universe is colonized and communicating, but we’re stuck in a region that is desolate. Or maybe higher and advanced civilizations simply don’t care about communicating with inferior civilisations like ours. There has been a continuous research in this field. Based on the level of difficulty of the question, our question is divided into two parts —Can we become an advanced civilisation ? and Would we be able to find advanced civilisations? The answer to the first part lies in the judicial use of energy including fusion power and space-based solar power. According to Michio Kaku, if humans increase their energy consumption at an average rate of 3 percent each year, there’s a possibility of attaining Type I status in 100–200 years. Finding the solutions to the second part of the question, led to our search for exoplanets, and sent signals in space. The 20th century had questions while the 21st century is the dawn of an age of discoveries, finding the answers to those questions……
