Civilisation Type Zero

Thanks to my friend Nick, I came across an interesting magazine called Prospect and an even more interesting article about the universe. Here is part of the article that talks about categorisation of civilisations that I thought you might enjoy reading. It may sound very much like science fiction, but it made me think how backwarded and primitive we are when it comes to our sources of energy, and how much work could be done to discover and exploit sustainable and virtually unlimited sources of energy.

“According to Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev, a Type I civilisation controls planetary energy. It would control all the power that falls into its planet from its sun (around 10¹⁶ watts). It could hypothetically control the weather and all planetary forces.

A Type II civilisation could control the energy output from the sun itself and hence harness ten billion times the power of a Type I civilisation. It would be immortal; nothing known to science will destroy it, including ice ages, meteors, even supernovae.

A Type III civilisation could control the output of an entire galaxy. It would consume 10bn times more energy than a Type II civilisation. The transition between these various types could be quite rapid. Since economic growth parallels energy consumption, a civilisation like ours growing at a modest 1-2 percent a year would make the historic leap to a Type I civilisation in 100 years or so, to Type II in a few thousand years, and a Type III between 100,000—1M years. In that timeframe, a Type III civilisation could colonise the entire galaxy, even if its rockets travel at sub-light speeds.

Our civilisation might qualify as a Type 0 civilisation, deriving its energy from dead plants, oil and coal. All alien civilisations seen on television and the movies can be ranked by this classification. For example, the Federation of Planets in Star Trek would be an emerging Type II civilisation. The Borg and the aliens in Independence Day would qualify as Type III civilisations. And the mysterious Q Continuum in Star Trek, a strange super-race with near God-like power, would qualify for a new category: Type IV.”

PhotoBlog