How To Measure A Civilization
By: Orion Harball
Tags: Space Exploration, Astronomy, Space Technology

What makes civilization civilized? Its manners? Must we dress nicely and converse about the most interesting topics in the world while we sip a spot of tea? Well, not exactly. In fact, we have all of those nice qualities as individuals. But true civilizations, according to a man named Nikolai Kardashev, are measured by their technology and not the way they behave.

A Bit About Nikolai…

After obtaining his Ph.D. of Astrophysics in 1962, Kardashev would go on to study various areas of the cosmos. He made various breakthroughs in radioastronomy, being one of the pioneers in SETI (The Search For Extraterrestrial Life). A few of his greatest achievements were discovering the first pulsar, creating new methods of measuring deep-space radiation, and most famously, creating new theories based on extraterrestrial civilizations.

So, What Is The Kardashev Scale?

Yes, you can measure a society’s power level. (THINK ABOUT THE MEMES! XD)

A scale that was created by Kardashev (Duh…) to measure the level of a civilization based on the amount of potential energy that it would use.

Why Was The Scale Created?

While studying a particular astral body, Soviet scientists including Nikolai realized that the body was emitting a certain radio signal. This signal gave off the idea that intelligent life must’ve existed on the star, and Nikolai was inspired! Soon after this discovery, a paper was published by Kardashev that discussed his ideas of intelligent life on other worlds.

What This Paper Entailed…

Titled, ‘Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilisations’, This paper was written as a way to explain what extremely advanced civilizations could be living like while we can’t see them.

Ideas Of Measurement:

Kardashev realized that civilization and its culture depends on both energy and technology. He also realized these ideas run in parallel as more advanced technology requires a lot of energy to power it. So, measuring civilizations with their output of energy was probably one of the easiest ways to put them to scale.

The Scale:

Now here’s the fun part, we get to figure out how advanced civilization has to be to fall into certain measurements on Kardashev’s scale! (But you can’t say it’s over 9000, there aren’t enough levels for that. XD)

Quick Reminder For Scale: 1 Terawatt = 10¹² Watts

Type 0: 1,000,000 Watts (10⁹ Watts)

A civilization that can use basic tools and collaborates with itself. This can apply to everything you see in the picture above, even the guy using a laptop! Pay attention to laptop guy especially, he’ll be important.

Type 1: 10,000 Terawatts… (10¹⁶ Watts)

A fully united society that has harnessed the complete energy output of its own world and starts to pull power from other parts of the cosmos. 10,000 Terawatts is equivalent to 10 Trillion lightbulbs (100-Watts per bulb), think about standing in front of that many lightbulbs (0_0).

Type 2: 1,000,000,000,000,000 Terawatts… (10²⁶ Watts)

Harnessed its star for energy output and is fully capable of living on any part of its solar system. So we have built a Dyson Sphere around our star, enabling us to harness the 10²⁶ Watts needed to achieve type 2. This is something Elon Musk would love to strive for :). This number is so large… SO MANY LIGHTBULBS…

Type 3: 1… Okay, I’m getting a headache, but you get the idea. (10³⁶ Watts)

A society that has been united galaxywide and can control the output of its entire localized galaxy. YEA, WE’RE TALKING STARWARS!!! So, every star’s energy can be harvested and used accordingly.

How to measure your civilization, according to Carl Sagan…

Carl Sagan’s equation…

An equation made by the lovely astrophysicist gives us the ability to calculate the power level of our society. K is equivalent to the total Kardashev Level, and P is the civilization’s maximum output of energy. For all the math nerds out there, this should be easy enough to use!

The Big Question: What type of civilization are we?

So far, we are still a type that relies on its own planet to produce energy. Our ranking is even more interesting, which is a decimal. Even with powerful tools (Laptop guy) we still aren’t that advanced. We have not even achieved type one yet! More accurately, 0.73, but why is it a decimal and not a whole number?

WHY ARE WE HERE?!?!

Qualities that make us a type one:

We are able to identify ourselves as a single race rather than many, supporting other cultures, ideas, and technologies. We have the ability to communicate with each other globally, bringing single nations closer than ever. We can harness the majority of our planet’s energy.

Qualities that keep us near zero:

Some cultural groups and nations cannot tolerate the rest of the world and will either isolate themselves away from or fight against the rest of it. Distribution of energy and resources is still limited in some areas, making entire nations secluded and starved. We have the power to alter our planet’s chemistry in a negative and irreversible way; Either quickly with the push of a button, or slowly, by drowning in the wastes of our own energy.

How can we get to type 1?

Okay, no matter what, we will get there! Every year, humanity consumes more energy to power its advanced technology, and our tech is advancing pretty quickly! So now, it is only a matter of time…

When?

Many astrophysicists (Michio Kaku) are guessing between 100–200 years at the most. Considering our rapid advancements in technology, this definitely seems doable! But we must also consider how we’re going to get there.

Pollution is an issue:

85% of our energy comes from nonrenewable resources, think about all of that pollution! It’s killing our planet day by day, so we definitely need to figure out how to stop using this stuff quickly!

So we need to come up with something! The question now is… Are there any sources of energy that can beat out carbon-emitting fossil fuels?

(This article is part of a small series on alternative forms of energy, please stay tuned for the continuation of this article!)