ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS - THE KARDASHEV SCALE
Earth, our home is one of the moat of dust in the milky way galaxy and our milky way galaxy is one of the multi trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Just how small we are. But we think about things bigger than the universe itself. Humans make theories and once they come true, its just the universal truth. Scientists presume that in our milky way itself, there are like 40 billion Earth like planets. But don't get too excited because nobody lives there as far as we've discovered them. But what if we found them anytime sooner or later? It would probably change our perception of ourselves if we found them. Will finding any "alien" civilization help humanity grow and thrive or will it be our end?
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
The universe began from the Big Bang. We all know that. As the universe is so big and expanding since the Big Bang, let's assume that civilizations start millions of years apart from each other. Each civilization has some differences. Some may be more developed than us, some may be living lives like cavemen. If we look at ourselves, we have developed our technologies so fast that today we consume tons of amount of energy everyday even though we know what are its consequences. Our population graph has risen up so fast in just a few years. We have reached the mark of 8 Billion in terms of population! And its very likely that all this will continue in the upcoming far future.
Based on this, a scientist named Nikolai Kardashev developed a method of categorizing different civilizations through a scale named after him, The Kardashev Scale.
THE KARDASHEV SCALE
The Kardashev scale is a method of ranking civilizations based on their energy use and development in technology. In general, this scale puts civilizations into four different categories.
Type 1 Civilization: A Type 1 Civilization has the ability to use energy available on their home planet just like us.
Type 2 Civilization: A Type 2 Civilization is able to use all the energy available in their star and solar system.
Type 3 Civilization: A Type 3 Civilization has the capability to use the energy available in their whole galaxy.
Type 4 Civilization: And the final type, the god of all civilizations. Type 4 Civilization can use energy of multiple galaxies.
Now, to oversimplify, there are some subcategories as well. Let's look at all the types of civilizations in detail.
TYPE 1 CIVILIZATION
A Type 1 Civilization is like full of hunter gatherers to something we could achieve in the next hundred years. There might be a lot of Type 1 Civilizations present in the Milky Way, but the thing is, we haven't discovered any. Are you curious to know what type our civilization is? It's interesting to know that we aren't even at Type 1 type of civilization! We are living in a sub category of Type 0.75 Civilization presently. It is assumed that over a next few decades we might possibly reach the Type 1 Civilization mark.
This is because we are still busy using the resources and energy available on Earth itself rather than mining on other planets.
TYPE 2 CIVILIZATION
Once we become a Type 1 Civilization, our next step is more advancement and growth. To become a Type 2 Civilization, we will have to explore for more energy on other planets and stars in our solar system. We might have to mine on other planets in search of energy. We might even set up certain industries on other planets as well. By then, we might be able to terraform or make a planet habitable by controlling its rotation and climate. These things might look like impossible for now, but as we've seen, many impossible things have now became possible.
We would be having so much energy, that even if we ran out, we would still have our biggest energy source: The Sun. We can build a "Dyson Sphere" which is surrounds the Sun and captures its energy. It's a very interesting hypothetical concept made by scientists. And by the time we become a Type 2, Dyson sphere would no longer be a dream. And once this megastructure is finished, energy for us would practically be unlimited forever. With a Type 2 Civilization, we would be able to actually MOVE entire solar systems as well.
TYPE 3 CIVILIZATION
But do you think we'll stop. Well, no! If even Type 2 Civilization doesn't seem to blow your mind, here's Type 3 Civilization which is practically far far way ahead to ever be achieved by creatures like us humans. This Type 3 is so immense that its hard to even imagine how it will even look like and whether we humans will be humans or become something else.
Will a Type 3 Civilization able to Time Travel? Will it create something that we humans never even imagined of? We don't know. But it's so amazing to even think of those super civilizations. The closer we move to Type 3, the harder it becomes to even imagine what it would look like. There could be extra dimensions, some things we never discovered or things that we discovered could be disproved and so on. But the game doesn't gets over here.
TYPE 4 OR 5 CIVILIZATION
This Type is probably the GOD civilization about which we know nothing. There might be some alien species who are living in the Type 4 Civilization and who knows they could do anything to humans if they find us out. We can only prey that they are nice and won't do any harm to us, otherwise we humans can not even think of the superior powers they would have.
This is the most scariest Type of civilization to exist. These types of civilizations can use the energy of multiple galaxies. But is that it at all?
TYPE Ω CIVILIZATION
Ultimately, there will be a type Ω (omega) civilization which are the real Gods of the universe. They have the ultimate control over everything! They can utilize energy of the entire universe! The Type Omega Ω civilizations might be the actual creators of our universe! We might just be their simulations.
But the thing is, Type 3 and above civilizations are theories that humans have made and we've never actually seen them exist. But we can be sure that there may be Type 1 and Type 2 civilizations as humanity can actually achieve that. If Type 3 civilizations existed, then why don't we see their impact on the universe. There could be some Type 3 civilizations, only thing is, we haven't seen them. This is the reason why scientists think that there are no Type 3 and above type of civilizations. Who knows? The universe is very big, they might be existing in some corner of the universe like us.
The good news is, if there aren't any Type 3 or above type of civilizations, then we have our own galaxy to utilize and explore. So, typical spectrum to look upon civilizations is from Type 1.5 to 2.5 as they'll be not so advanced that we can not understand their motives.
We are saying that we've seen nobody advanced than us, but, we've just had a glimpse of the universe. There might be some other civilizations that we didn't even imagined of. Space exploration is very deep.
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