The Kardashev Scale
How Far Can Our Civilization Go?
By Prasoon Ravi
All of us must have thought of aliens out there in space at some point in time based on the knowledge we have, but how do scientists think about such possible extraterrestrial life forms?
Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed a scale in 1964 that ranked the civilizations possibly present in the universe including humans and aliens (if any) based on the amount of energy they could harness from a stellar system.
1. The first level called the Type I civilization or a planetary civilization — can use and store all of its energy resources available on the planet.
2. Type II civilization or the stellar civilization that has control over all the energy available in its planetary system or all the energy that its star emits.
3. Type III civilization or the galactic civilization has access to all the energy available in its galaxy.
This scale was also modified later, that included the 0, IV, and V scale. The 0 scales having an energy consumption of about 1 MW. The IV scale controlling its universe and the V scale having access to resources across multiple universes (once again if any). So the important thing that must have come to your mind by now is where do humans rank on this scale?
Rate it yourself first and let’s see where we stand.
Famous astronomer, Carl Sagan proposed a formula to measure the level of civilization.
K = ((logP base 10 ) — 6)/10
P is the power consumed in watts, K is the rank of the civilization.
Though this formula was not a part of the Kardashev scale, considering this as a base the Type I had an energy of the order of 10¹⁶ watts, Type II civilizations with 10²⁶ watts of energy access, and Type III being able to harness 10³⁶ watts of energy. Many more scales were created by scientists that included information available (by Carl Sagan), micro dimensional mastery (by John Barrow), and many more.
Now back to the question we had asked you earlier. Where do humans lie on this scale?
In case you assumed we are a type I civilization think again. Humans currently have a score of 0.7. We had an average power consumption of 18.4 Terawatt in 2018 i.e. 0.73 according to Sagan’s formula. Michio Kaku calculated that if we increase our power consumption by 3% each year we will reach Type I civilization in 100–200 years, the Type II-tier in a few thousand years, and Type III civilization is around 100,000 to a million years at this pace.
Now apart from humans if we talk about other civilizations, is there any other civilization out there more advanced, at Type II or Type III level?
NASA’s Kepler telescope (now retired) was designed to survey the Milky Way galaxy and find potential stars and planets similar to ours in search of other life forms/civilizations. One of the most surprising finds of Kepler was Tabby star also known as Boyajian Star(designated KIC 8462852) after its chief investigator Tabetha “Tabby” Suzanne Boyajian. These stars showed a sudden dip of up to 22% in their luminosity for days or weeks. Though this theory is near the bottom in the list of most astronomers a possible explanation of this sudden decrease is a Dyson sphere and the presence of advanced civilizations. These hypothetical shells built around a star would be capable of capturing all the energy released by its star. These structures can be built by a Type II civilization. Other possible explanations include a cloud of dust, asteroids orbiting the star, or a planet eclipsing it. None of these theories were able to explain all the observations recorded.
Humans yet haven’t found any observational evidence for a Type III civilization and even a Type II civilization is less likely. So you can just go to bed peacefully tonight in case you’re afraid that aliens might attack us. The Kardashev scale is just a proposed theory to rate other possible civilizations and thus cannot be considered very accurate. The scale fails to talk about the efficiency of energy consumption. Some argue that since we have no understanding of other civilizations we cannot rank them.
References
- Barycentric Julian Date — https://astroutils.astronomy.osu.edu/.../bjd_explanation...
- Nikolai Kardashev — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kardashev
- Kardashev scale — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
- Human timeline and more on Kardashev scale — https://beyond-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Kardashev_Scale
- Dyson Sphere — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
- Kepler telescope NASA — https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/keplerscience/
- Scientists take on higher civilizations — http://www.sci-news.com/.../science-kardashev-type-iii...
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