The Three Stages of Civilization
by Tommy J. Charles
“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” -Michio Kaku
The above is an amazing 1991 interview with Dr. Michio Kaku. In the video, he briefly covers the three stages of civilization as outlined by Nikolai Semenovich Kardashev. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find a shorter video. In that one, he covers this topic at length. Don’t skip the longer interview if you’re a fan of Dr. Kaku, though. It’s astonishing.
The Stages
Type 1: a civilization that has harnessed the energy of its planet.
Type 2: a civilization that has harnessed the energy of its star. This is the Federation of Star Trek lore.
Type 3: a civilization that has harnessed the energy of its galaxy. This is the Galactic Empire of the Star Wars universe.
There is a fourth type, but you might as well call it “godhood.”
Antimatter
The majority of our energy still comes from fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are inefficient. Professor Kaku believes we may attain Type 1 status within a few centuries by harnessing antimatter as an energy source.
When normal matter and antimatter collide, they release an incredible amount of energy, and not in the cute and controlled way that Duracell batteries do. It’s more or less total annihilation of the particles involved.
Remember E=MC2?
In fact, if just one gram of antimatter were to come in contact with one gram of normal matter, you would have a reaction on your hands that’s akin to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. That’s a 20-kiloton bomb.
Imagine the insurance liability requirements of an anti-matter power plant.
While scientists have stored minute amounts of anti-hydrogen, producing it is prohibitively expensive — for now. A shorter route to Type 1 may be good ol’ fashioned cold fusion.
cold fu·sion
noun
nuclear fusion occurring at or close to room temperature. Claims for its discovery in 1989 are generally held to have been mistaken.
It appears that scientists have been making progress on this since 1989.
“When a current is passed through palladium or titanium electrodes immersed in an electrolyte of deuterated water and various metal salts, a small but significant flux of neutrons is detected. Fusion of deuterons within the metal lattice may be the explanation.”
Reaching Type 2 Status
“One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star.” -Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson proposed a model — the Dyson sphere — for arriving at Type 2 status. Don’t get too excited, folks. As generous as Moore’s Law is, we won’t be able to attempt this for thousands of years. The structure is technically described as a semi-porous shell composed of millions of solar collectors and gigantic mirrors. If we were able to build a Dyson sphere around our sun, we would collect roughly 400 septillion watts of energy per second.
That’s a trillion times more energy than we currently utilize.
I’m deeply skeptical of Type 3. I find it unlikely that any race will evolve to the point of harnessing all of the stars within their galaxy. I think advanced aliens will learn how to upload their minds onto servers long before they learn how to manipulate blackholes or leverage dark energy. What use would they have for physical stars when they can live forever within their version of the Matrix?
I’m probably wrong.
What’s your take?
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