In 1964 astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed a classification system of technological civilizations
applicable to both ourselves and other civilizations that may be present in the universe. This
classification system, originally featuring three categories, has since been unofficially
expanded to cover hypothetical supercivilizations that may be possible, along with our own sort
of sad classification of Type 0, or as Sagan put it type 0.7.
Kardashev's thinking for the system is straightforward. If you assume that energy consumption will
grow for an advancing civilization, they will then seek to generate more energy to satisfy
that need. The scale is entirely hypothetical, given that we've never seen an advanced alien
civilization, and may not reflect how advanced civilizations actually behave, this is only
if they use energy like we do. That's somewhat of a big assumption and may represent an Achilles
Heel for the Kardashev scale. More on that in a minute.
Kardashev's original scale starts with a Type I civilization. This is a civilization that
can use and store most of the energy available to a planet, specifically that coming from
its sun. We're not to this level yet, which is why we rank at Type 0. We still use fossil
fuels largely and do not have a good method of harnessing and storing all of the energy
forms available to us, especially that coming from the sun. As we progress and finally develop
fusion energy and better methods of harnessing geothermal and solar energy, we will begin
to make that transition. This should happen over the next few hundred years, though should
we hit a technological Singularity, it would probably be sooner.
Type II status is a ways off for us no matter what. This is a civilization that can harness
the entire energy generation potential of their star. One way to do this is a Dyson
sphere or swarm that can allow you to harvest most of the energy the star itself produces
by encasing it, or swarming it, with energy collectors.
Type III is a civilization that not only can do that with a single star, but with most
of the stars in an entire galaxy. Kardashev ended the scale there, but some since have
suggested two other levels may possible. And this is where it gets weird.
A Type IV civilization would be able to harness the power of an entire universe. In 2003 Zoltan
Galantai published a paper that detailed what one of these supercivilizations might be like,
links and citations to all papers mentioned in the description below. This also gets into
the much deeper subject of if we were looking at aliens, would we know we were looking at
aliens? Recognition is a serious enough problem for types I through III, but far worse for
IV and above and here's why. A number of scientists over the years have
pointed out that the expectation to find alien Dyson Swarms and radio beacons in space are
due to a cultural bias. We might build those things, but aliens may not. B. I. Panovkin
pointed out that when we search for alien life, we don't really have a choice but to
hope that we find an earth-like one so that we can comprehend it. Or as Stanislaus Lem
pointed out, that problem may even be more mundane.
He put it in these terms. You could measure someone's sugar levels in their bodily fluids
and if you know that higher levels indicate that someone recently ate a large amount of
sweets, then you would know that you were seeing an artificial effect.
However, if you didn't know that higher levels indicated anything out of the ordinary, you
would only see sugars that are indistinguishable from those in nature and you'd have no idea
that anything was amiss. Applied to exobiology, this would be if the activities of an alien
civilization were nearly identical to a known natural phenomenon. This is a simplification,
but it hammers the point home. If you don't know the ground rules that govern what you're
looking at, then you may miss it. And that's the problem with a Type IV civilization.
As Galantai's paper shows, you probably wouldn't recognize a Type IV civilization because you've
got nothing to compare it to at that level of sheer power to manipulate something, in
this case the universe itself. What may appear natural to us as part of the fabric and behavior
of the universe may actually be artificial and produced by a supercivilization.
The final class would be Type V, which would be a supercivilization that controlled the
power of multiple universes. Little to nothing can be said of this class of civilization,
only that they would be incomprehensibly powerful, transuniversal, and so far advanced that any
trace of them is unlikely to be recognized since they would set all the ground rules.
This particular class of civilization would however have implications on Simulation theory,
see my video on this channel for more on that. There have been many other proposed modifications
to the Kardashev scale, and some question as to whether energy is really a factor at
all. Civilizations may do the opposite of what we expect and miniaturize and use very
little energy. Kardashev believed that the need for communication would drive the use
of energy, but nothing says a civilization would want to communicate, or even care about
the universe at large. Also possible are methods of communication
that we cannot yet foresee with our current understanding of physics. The bottom line
is that until we actually see an advanced civilization, or become one ourselves, all
we can really do is hypothesize. But one thing remains curious. Other than our own .7 rating
on the Kardashev scale, we've never seen any evidence of any of the other classes being
present in the universe. Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science
fiction author John Michael Godier currently classing my house as .3 on the Kardashev scale
as I just bought a new smart TV and I can't figure out how to use it and be sure to check
out my books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channel for regular,
in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing
universe in which we live.