Will humanity become a Kardashev Type III civilization by 2100?

[matt-browne-sfw]

I know... we are not really Type I yet, but with accelerating change a lot of things can happen over the next 100 years.

The Kardashev scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is. The scale has three designated categories, types, based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal, quantified in units of power (watts) and plotted on an increasing logarithmic scale. A Type III civilization is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy, approximately 4 × 10^37 watts.

Science fiction today. Reality in the future?

Some proposals go beyond Type III and predict a Type IV civilization harnessing the power of a whole universe (assuming there are several).

 

[Lenny]

I was actually dicussing this with someone else a few nights ago... well, I say discussing, I really mean that he was telling me, and I was "ooh" and "ahh" ing.

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I don't really know that much about it all, but I can see it happening... eventually.

We've got the technology for fusion, and it's only a matter of time before we can get energy out to surpass what's put in. And after that, it won't take too long to tweak the methods and technology used to make fusion power much more efficient.

There was a plan a couple of years ago to basically create a mini-Sun in China - a joint project by various nations, which would involve extracting deuterium from the sea and using fusion to create the miniature Sun, which would then be harnessed for the energy. From there, and this is purely thought on my own part (no idea of the physics behind it), might it be possible to create a sort of Dyson sphere? If so, the technology could be improved and improved until a true Dyson sphere around the Sun would be feasible, which would spring us into the Type II category, yes?

To get to Type III, though, I'd imagine it would be a lot harder that getting to Type II. Yes, we'd have the knowledge and technology to be able to create a Dyson sphere, having just set one up around the sun, but how would we go about sphering the galaxy? To do it with the space travel technology, it'd take years upon years - 2100 would come and go.

Hopefully, in the next 100 years, some bright spark can make space travel a lot faster.

There was an interesting theory a couple of years ago that hypothesised multiple... planes of existence, I guess (I hesitate to use "dimensions", because my Physics friends at school have told me off for it! ), on which the speed of light is faster than our own. A group of researchers took this and made plans for an engine that could move into these planes, and travel close to the 'new' lightspeed, which would be faster than our own, allowing it to cover more space than at 'normal' light speed in the same time period, before returning to our own plane for the final leg of the journey.

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It's a very interesting subject, but it boggles the mind... mine, at least. I'd love to geek up on it when I have the time, but I'm completely bogged down until the end of June.

 

[chrispenycate]

To cut it short, no. I did an analysis of what it would take to build a Dyson swarm, with the aim of finishing it in one millennium (which sounds quite reasonable at first), using the greater part of the energy harnessed to build the next generation of gatherers. The first receptors were the size of football pitches; it took me fifty years of generations of factories to get them to the size of Switzerland, and by the end I was having to average two a second.
And even then I wasn't harnessing all of the sun's energy, because the outside was radiating in infra-red (or possibly very long wavelength red, even. Waste.
So no, even assuming FTL travel (essential, as you couldn't get to more than a tiny fraction of the galaxy in a century otherwise), exponential growth of manufacturing facilities, total co-operation of all mankind, lack of "two steps forward, one sideways and one back" progress, and something to use all that energy for when you've collected it, a century is too short.

 

[thecommabandit]

There was an interesting theory a couple of years ago that hypothesised multiple... planes of existence, I guess (I hesitate to use "dimensions", because my Physics friends at school have told me off for it! ), on which the speed of light is faster than our own. A group of researchers took this and made plans for an engine that could move into these planes, and travel close to the 'new' lightspeed, which would be faster than our own, allowing it to cover more space than at 'normal' light speed in the same time period, before returning to our own plane for the final leg of the journey.

Exactly the principle of the hyperdrive in Star Wars. Not that it's any kind of solution to the problem, it's just shifting the solution.

"Hrmm, so if we can't travel faster than light in this universe what can we do?"
"Well, maybe we could go to another universe that has a higher speed of light?"
"Genius! That'll work brilliantly!"
"But how do we get to that other universe?"
"Hrmm..."


Type III in a hundred years? Bullcrap. We'll never get there that fast. A thousand years is a bit more like it. Plus, Dyson Spheres are so inelegant.

 

[Steve Jordan]

Type III? Sorry, not in a hundred years, or in a thousand. I can't even see man having a need for all that energy, much less the desire to cannibalize the energy of entire galaxies for any purpose. But I really don't see man's developing the ability to harness all that much power... ever. We'll be lucky if we develop the capacity to harness all of our own Sun's power within 100 years.

 

[Sire Of Dragons]

My theory has always been that everything has been invented or designed on paper and is just being hidden away in Area 51

 

[matt-browne-sfw]

Why not in 200 years? Technological change is accelerating. Jules Vernes suggested a trip to the moon in the 19th century...

 

[Pyan]

There's an interesting essay, collected in A Hole In Space, called Bigger than Worlds, by Larry Niven.
Given the expotential growth of the human race, he reckons that eventually we'll need a Dyson sphere around the galaxy to satisfy our energy needs....

But a Type III by 2100? Not a chance.

 

[Urien]

Likely developments in the next two hundred years?

1. Practical immortality
2. Fusion.
3. Machine-biological interface
4. External gestation of babies.
5. Quantum computers.

I think we can reasonably expect those developments from research and development happening now.

Given that few if any predicted the information revolution then something could develop from left field. That something would have to be FTL in some form if we are to even escape this solar system.

 

[Steve Jordan]

Why not in 200 years? Technological change is accelerating.

Yes, it is, but the amount of power you're talking about harnessing is on such a few orders of magnitude above anything we've managed to accomplish, or can reasonably expect to accomplish within a millennia, that I just can't see it.

Remember, the amount of energy expended by Man since his beginnings doesn't amount to spit compared to the amount of energy expended by the Sun (estimated to be 386 billion billion megawatts per second). There's a lot of power out there. Expecting Man to be able to contain all that is highly wishful thinking... you might as well wish us wings so we can fly to Proxima...

 

[matt-browne-sfw]

Yes, it is, but the amount of power you're talking about harnessing is on such a few orders of magnitude above anything we've managed to accomplish, or can reasonably expect to accomplish within a millennia, that I just can't see it.

Remember, the amount of energy expended by Man since his beginnings doesn't amount to spit compared to the amount of energy expended by the Sun (estimated to be 386 billion billion megawatts per second). There's a lot of power out there. Expecting Man to be able to contain all that is highly wishful thinking... you might as well wish us wings so we can fly to Proxima...

Well, my gut feeling tells me you're right. So Mr Kardashev created utopia far beyond our current dreams... it's still a very appealing thought experiment.

 

[Rodders]

Sorry guys, i'm completely ignorant on these sorts of Hard Sciences, but interested in the subject none the less. If you were able to harness all the power of the sun, what would you need all that energy for?

I would feel that we're a bit further away than 100 years from that sort of technology. Although technology has come on a long way, we only look at it from the aspect of our own short life spans so it only seems like we're moving forward. Long term we're not that technologically advanced. Our best mode of transport is still only the wheel. Not only that, but it would take more than 100 years to develope the industry infrastructure that we'd need for the long term space travel/habitation.

Again, apologies for being a bit dim.

 

[Scifi fan]

From the whole galaxy? No, not in 90 years. But from the sun and the solar system? Yes.

 

[Ursa major]

Isn't there a rather large assumption built into the proposition that man will be able to harness the total power of the galaxy (never mind how far in the future)?

I mean the assumption that humanity is the first species capable of doing this, and going ahead with it, in our galaxy. For if we are not the first, where is the evidence that other species have done this already? (And isn't this human exceptionalism writ really large?)

 

[Esioul]

More likely civilisation will have collapsed and we'll be living in trees again.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

Its pretty easy to see why Type III civilization is outside the realm of plausibility for 2100. The total body of scientific knowledge doubles every 10 years. Technology is the practical application of scientific knowledge. While not a perfect 1-1 correlation we can assume it is for the purpose of this thought experiment (note that for some time computing power has been an almost direct correlation along those lines).

100 years = 2 ^5 or 32 fold increase. The total energy output of the sun is 3.86 x 10^26 joules per second. The yearly electricity consumption for the whole world as of 2005 is approximately 5.67 x 10^19 joules. Now this isn't the same as total power generation potential, but it is a good indicator of what our capabilities are. In any case, you can see the difference in the orders of magnitude are far more than a factor of 32.


I suspect that we will become a Type II civilization by the 2200's, barring dark ages of course. Exponential rate of manufacturing and scientific knowledge runs into a serious barrier in the form of astronomical units of time, distance, and energy output (stars are crazy powerful and galaxies are beyond anything that your average person has any conception of). Type III civilizations are many many hundreds of years off. We might start thinking about how to become a Type III civilization in a thousand years...


But as to why you might need that much energy? Have you ever considered how much energy galactic level computing and resource allocation and organization would require? When your race extends to the furthest reaches of your galaxy and maybe into a few neighboring galaxies you need a whole heck of a lot of power to keep things working smoothly.

MTF

 

[Esioul]

Seriously. We probably won't last that long.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

I agree but only because we will not be humans any more by then; we will be post humans.

MTF

 

[Ursa major]

* Wonders how many of us would be considered to be post-humans already. *

 

[Pyan]

I'd settle for us being a civilization by 2100, full stop...