Hi friends 🖖;
Everyone, especially Age of Empires enthusiasts 😉, has already heard about the archaeological periods that have marked our civilization. Thus the Stone Age characterizes the prehistoric period when men made various stone tools, the Bronze and Iron Age marks the mastery of metallurgy, the colonial period refers to the establishment of contact with the New World etc.
However, there exist also similar classification, but on a more macroscopic scale. A classification that allows us to compare all the civilizations of the universe, whether on Earth or on other planets. The question we can ask ourselves is “What criteria can we use to compare/classify different universe civilizations?” Well, as it turns out, the answer is quite unanimous:
- Kardachev’s scale: Kardachev is a Soviet astronomer born in 1932 and considered one of the pioneers of the SETI program. For him, the ranking can be done according to the ability to access energy. Thus, a civilization is of:
- Type I if it consumes all of its planet’s energy.
- Type II if it catches the energy directly from a star.
- Type III if it has access to all the energy in its galaxy.
- Carl Sagan, the famous American astronomer, refines these rankings and quantifies the thresholds with the equation $$K = (\log10 W - 6)/10$$ where W is the power consumption. For example a Type-2.3 civilization is able to access \(10^{29}\) Watts (cf this post for the order of magnitude).
- Zoltan Galántai, a polish scholar, prefers two other scales:
- Based on the assumption that a civilization that masters nanotechnology would not need much energy, the first one is based on the ability of miniaturization.
- The second scale is based on the ability to survive natural disasters, both intra-planetary and cosmic. Thus:
- Type-I would be able to survive a local natural disaster such as a flood.
- Type-II to a continental disaster such as a drought.
- Type-III to a global disaster like the fall of a comet.
- Type-IV is a multi-planetary civilization, which makes it resilient to the vast majority of disasters.
- finally Type-V is an immortal civilization
To go further, I highly recommend the book “Physics of the Future” and “The Future of Humanity”by Michio Kaku.
END OF TRANSMISSION.