How far can we go? (KARDASHEV Scale)

Human Beings as a civilization have come a long way since its dawn. 

The question is, how much further can we go?

According to a Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, the level of technological advancements of a civilization could be measured by the amount of energy they consume or harvest.

In 1964, Kardashev came up with the KARDASHEV Scale. This scale tells us about 3 types of civilizations based on the order of magnitude of power available to them.

Type I: (Planetary Civilization)

A civilization capable of harvesting the entire energy of its host planet, in our case the Earth.

This includes all the energy that we receive from our host star and the energy produced by our planet, this may be wind, thermal, hydro, etc.

We, humans, are currently at 0.73 Kardashev scale, which is considered to be a Type 0 Civilization.

Whether we like it or not we are moving towards being type 1, in 100 to 200 years. 

Michio Kaku, a well-known Physicist thinks such a civilization will be able to control Volcanos, Earthquakes and change weather. As we reach Type 1, the world will change as we know it. We will be building ocean cities and megastructures. 

Type II: 

The primary source of energy of any star system is the Star or the Stars (In case of a binary star system).

A type 2 civilization, can make use of the total energy of the host Star(s).

Physicist and Mathematician, Freeman Dyson, in 1960 came up with a structure with a surface area greater the 600 million times the surface area of Earth.

This megastructure popularly known as the Dyson Sphere would be built around the Sun or theoretically any star and capture all its energy.

A Dyson Sphere can then provide this energy to the home planet.

It is also possible that we might not even need a home planet, we will be living on the outer layer of the sphere itself. There would easily be enough energy to make an artificial climate on the entire surface of the spere.

 Astrophysicists also believe, If a super-advanced alien species does exist, They would have already made such a structure or something similar. Spotting such a structure could be our first and easiest step to finding our cosmic neighbours.

Humans, if they survive, could achieve such a scale in about 1000 to 2000 years.

Type III:

Kardashev imagined such a civilization to be “a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy”.

A type 3 civilization is hard to fathom, a civilization capable of extracting the entire power of its host galaxy, stripping off all energy from every single Star System. This could take anywhere from 100,000 to forever.

We are talking about, nano-bots building Dyson Spheres all over the galaxy. Which seems near to impossible, but possible.

Kardashev did not believe any civilization could go past type 3.

Obviously, dreamers came up with more, mainly, type 4, type 5 and type 6.

Type IV, Being able to harness energy from the entire observable universe. Such a civilization would be feeding blackholes with Stars to extract the whole energy of the star instantly.

Type V, Would be able to harness energy from multiple universe or multi-verse. Such a multi-verse has not been observed or proven. However, there is a possibility of its existence.

Type VI, Such a civilization will be able to play God, They will be able to control space and time. At this level, the line between a being and space-time continuum would seem grey.