KARDASHEV SCALE, TYPE 3 CIVILIZATION, BEINGS WITH THE POWER OF GODS.
In 1964 the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev developed a method
that facilitates the search for extraterrestrial life by measuring the degree of the technological
evolution of civilization and dividing them into 3 types. Type 1, 2, and 3.
In this way, type 1 civilization can control the energy of a planet,
type 2 can control the energy of a star, and type 3 can control the energy of an entire galaxy
with technology so advanced that it would be no different for us from magic.
What could a Type 3 civilization do? Stay to find out!
In the first and second parts of this series, we discuss type 1 and type 2
civilizations on the Kardashevscale. Today we will talk about a type 3 civilization.
On the Kardasehv scale, the amount of energy is measured in watts.
A type 1 civilization is capable of consuming 1016 Watts of energy, that is, the total energy
that a planet like the earth can provide in which absolutely all forms of energy generation such as
Solar, Thermal, Hydraulic, Wind, among others, and even fission and nuclear fusion are used.
A type 2 civilization can consume 1026 Watts of energy; this is all the energy that a star the
size of the sun can provide. A civilization that has reached these instances would have
the technological ability to move planets, terraform every planet in the star system in
which it is located, produce antimatter, and build a massive structure known as the Dyson Sphere,
which would serve to make the most of all the energy provided by a star.
And finally, the type 3 civilization could consume a total of 1036 Watts of energy;
this is equivalent to the total energy that all the stars of an entire galaxy can provide.
TECHNOLOGY OF A TYPE 3 CIVILIZATION A type 3 civilization would have
technologies very similar to a type 2 civilization but taken to a galactic scale.
Of course, they would also have completely new technologies that for now only exist in theory.
Some of these technologies include: USE OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES
Black holes are huge massive bodies with a large amount of compacted mass in a tiny space;
these are the product of the death of a star at least ten times larger than the sun
and can absorb everything close to them. Black holes have so much mass that they warp
the space around them, plus they can absorb other black holes to get bigger and become
supermassive black holes over time. Supermassive black holes are the densest bodies
in the universe; spiral galaxies like the Milky Way have supermassive black holes at their center,
which can have billions of times the mass of the sun.
In 1974 the physicist Stephen Hawking theorized that black holes produce radiation;
this radiation was called the "Hawking Radiation." A Type 3 civilization on the Kardashev scale
could build massive structures, similar to Dyson spheres, but billions of times more significant
to take advantage of this radiation emitted by black holes and could even take advantage of the
space-time deformation that exists in the vortices of a black hole, to travel into the future
due to time dilation. USE OF QUASARS
Quasars are the most luminous objects in the known universe, they consist of galaxies in
which the central supermassive black hole has begun to absorb everything within its reach,
and the matter that makes up the galaxy starts to form part of the black hole's accretion disk,
due to this a massive amount of energy is produced, released in the form of radio,
infrared, light, ultraviolet and X-ray waves. When a civilization reaches Kardashev scale 3, it
could build a vast structure capable of harnessing the immense amount of energy a Quasar produces.
The structure they would use would be very similar to that used in a black hole.
Still, for now, such technology is not possible to theorize for humans since it does not exist,
or rather, no known material can resist the deformation caused by space-time.
Of course, in addition to the technology to take advantage of these astronomical bodies,
a Type 3 civilization would also have smaller-scale technologies
that they would use to expand their civilization to the last corners of the galaxy.
EVOLUTION Currently, humans are
the only species known to create artificial organisms that serve us and help us fulfill
our tasks more easily and quickly, the robots. Already for decades, fiction writers such as Issac
Asimov began to worry about the hasty advance of machines. This concern is perfectly reflected in
his novel "I'm Robot," where robots became aware of themselves and threatened the human race.
Nowadays, computer technology and artificial intelligence that serves to control machines
are advancing by leaps and bounds; in less than 50 years, we went from performing a few
mathematical calculations to creating machines with human appearance and voices that imitate
our expressions and are capable of learning. If things continue like this, the technology
we believe will likely surpass us in intelligence sooner or later.
The artificial organisms we have created evolve much faster than biological organisms.
Biological evolution has made us human, but artificial evolution is much faster.
In this scenario, a civilization that has expanded through the galaxy would see the
disadvantage of being living organisms since they would be limited by slow biological evolution.
On the other hand, the machines and artificial intelligence that they created
will evolve faster and better than them until they eventually surpass them in all aspects.
To avoid this, a type 3 civilization on the Kardashev scale must set aside biological
evolution and become artificial beings, passing their mind and consciousness to
artificial devices created by themselves. The members of this civilization would be
utterly different from what we know; they would be neither biological nor artificial;
they would be a mixture of both. In this way, technology would not surpass them,
and they would live forever; in other words, the members of a type 3 civilization on the
Kardashev scale would be immortal beings. However, there is a second possibility
in which as the Type 3 civilization expands through the galaxy; it will run into other
extraterrestrial races that would also become part of its civilization either as members,
as slaves, or as simple workers. In this sense, the second scenario
is that a type 3 civilization would not be made up of a single type of species but would have a great
variety of living beings of different races and from parts of the galaxy that would all coexist
together with the same interstellar organization. For now, it isn't straightforward to determine
which scenario would be the most realistic since we have not yet encountered an extraterrestrial
civilization. INFORMATION
Another essential aspect of civilizations is that as they expand their knowledge also they do so.
From the beginning of human history until 2010, approximately 5 exabytes
of information were created, the same amount of data currently produced in a single day.
As our civilization grows, so does our generation of information exponentially.
A Type 3 civilization on the Kardashev scale would produce thousands of exabytes per second.
Because of this, they would need to build quantum computers and other devices
much more powerful than we can imagine today. Not only that, but by becoming artificial beings,
they could have access to all this information instantaneously,
having the reasoning of a biological being but the computing ability of a quantum computer.
CONTROL OF SPACE-TIME A type 1 civilization can
control genes, alter the development of living things, and manipulate molecules.
A type 2 civilization can control subatomic particles and manipulate atomic nuclei at will.
But a Type 3 civilization would be capable of all of the above and could also manipulate
the basic structure of space and time. Because they would have the technology
to manipulate stars, they could also use the structure on which the entire universe is built.
This would lead to the possibility of creating technologies that allow them to travel through
the universe using machines that for now only exist in our imagination, such as the Warp engine,
which we already talked about in a previous video, about the
technologies that extraterrestrials would use to bequeath to the earth.
With this technology, they could travel interstellar distances in fractions of time
that, for now, are impossible to achieve in the universe; in this way, they would reach
every corner of the galaxy in a few days, instead of taking several thousand years.
With the energy of a galaxy and the ability to manipulate space-time,
such a civilization could create famous wormholes. Wormholes are hypothetical structures of which we
do not yet have evidence of their existence. Still, according to theoretical physicists,
to come into existence, these structures would be cracks in space that would serve as shortcuts to
connect two very distant points of the universe and travel all that distance instantaneously.
Although this technology only exists in movies, this kind of technology would be possible for a
type 3 civilization on the Kardashev scale. POSSIBLE EXAMPLES OF A TYPE 3 CIVILIZATION
Imagining a type 3 civilization is difficult in real life; however, in the world of science
fiction, there are some attempts to capture what a society with these characteristics would be like.
In the science fiction film "Star Wars," an organization called "The Galactic Empire"
is presented that consists of an army that has total dominion over an entire galaxy,
reaching members of its organization on each planet and have managed to populate
all the solar systems of which they have reach. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said,
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is no different from magic"
this is because if a person will carry modern technology to humans from 2000 years ago for them,
it would be so incomprehensible that they could not differentiate technology from magic.
Members of a type 3 civilization would have technology that would be no different from
magic for us. They would be able to move stars, move solar systems, travel through space-time,
manipulate black holes and even live eternally, rather than living beings; they would be the
closest we can imagine to gods. CIVILIZATION TYPES 0, 4 AND 5
When Nicolai Kardashev proposed "The Kardashev Scale," he only raised the
3 types of civilizations discussed throughout this series. However,
other specialists decided to expand the scale of the original Kardasehv a little and add another 3.
Civilization type 0: This is a civilization that is well below type 1;
this was created to place the human race within the scale; the society of humans is
in type 0 since we are not yet able to take advantage of the total energy of our planet.
Civilization Type 4: Far above the Type 3 civilization that can control the energy of a
galaxy is the Type 4 civilization which consists of a society capable of handling the energy
of multiple galaxies of the observable universe. Scientist Michio Kaku was the first to introduce
this type of civilization within the Kardashev scale. He deduced that if there
can be a civilization capable of controlling an entire galaxy, sooner or later, civilization
will have the power to prevent the management of multiple galaxies of the universe itself.
He also mentions that, if possible, for now, there is still no such civilization, since
if it existed, we would have already realized because our galaxy would be under its control.
EXAMPLES OF TYPE 4 CIVILIZATION If a type 3 civilization is already
difficult to imagine, a type 4 civilization is even more so; however, some writers have
tried to capture what the characteristics of a type 4 civilization would be like.
The first of these examples is the Galactic Frieza Army, which is the name by which it calls itself
a fictional army that appears in the anime series "Dragon Ball Z"
created by Akira Toriyama. This army is commanded by the emperor of the Freeza universe, who is
one of the main enemies of the protagonists. In the animated series, it is shown that the
Galactic Frieza Army has managed to conquer the entire universe, and its main area of trade
consists of finding habitable planets, eradicating any intelligent species that inhabit it,
and then selling them to other extraterrestrial races looking for a place to settle.
There is also the example of the 1965 novel "Dune" by writer Frank Herbert; in this novel,
it is narrated that humanity has managed to populate the entire universe, although the primary
outcomes happen in a single group of planets where a struggle for the power of a material
that triggers an interstellar battle takes place. In both cases, it is shown that the technologies
developed by both works of fiction allow them to travel throughout the universe without problems.
Civilization Type 5: Finally, the type 5 civilization can control all the energy
provided, not only by the universe but by all the universes that can exist, that is,
maintain the energy of the multiverse. This last civilization falls totally
within the category of fantasy since, for now, we have no evidence that other universes exist.
We hope that you have been able to learn all the differences between
the different types of civilizations on the Kardashev scale with this series.