How scary is the fourth level of civilization

The word civilization is not new to us, it refers to the product of human society to a certain stage of development. In our history, there existed four ancient civilizations, and although only China is left today with a continuous history, it is a testimony to the continuous development of human civilization.

In addition to this regional civilization on Earth, we can also expand the scope of civilization, such as what we usually call Earth civilization. Earth civilization has humans on Earth as the main body, as opposed to extraterrestrial civilizations in the universe, which we usually think of as aliens.

But did you know? In addition to this kind of civilization that uses scope as a basis for division, it is also possible to divide civilizations according to different classes.

Kardashev hierarchy

The idea of dividing civilizations into classes was proposed by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in the 1960s, an idea inspired, in a sense, by the development of human aerospace.

The famous "Dyson Sphere" theory, which predates the Kardashev class by only four years, was developed by American physicist Freeman Dyson.

Dyson argued that our planet has a limited amount of energy and that human development necessarily requires a lot of energy, so the resources on Earth are far from being able to support the further development of our civilization on Earth.

However, in our stellar-planetary system, the vast majority of energy from the stars is wasted. Therefore, Dyson believes that as soon as civilization develops to a certain level, it will be able to surround the sun with a huge spherical structure, thus using the sun's energy to sustain its civilization to a higher level as much as possible.

In his perception, two messages are revealed: one is that human civilization is a continuous development upward process; the second is that human civilization will have a constant source of energy consumption in the process of development.

But these messages leave a lot of room for imagination. How much energy can a civilization utilize? And what level of civilization can make full use of the energy of the stars?

The Kardashev class is a further answer to these questions. He envisioned civilizations throughout the universe and divided their ranks into different levels, based on their level of mastery of different energy control technologies.

For this purpose, he divided the development of civilizations in the galaxy into three different types, i.e., he divided them into a hierarchy from low to high.

In the first-class citizen, the main body of the civilization is the owner of the planet's energy, and can dominate the entire planet and the surrounding moons; the second-class civilization's ability to use energy is upgraded to the star system in which it is located, and they can use the energy of the entire star system, which is closer to the "Dyson Sphere"; the more developed class III civilizations are already able to use the energy of the entire galaxy for themselves.

As you can see, his proposed civilization level is only three, but the span is very large. To complete his theory, Kardashev also devised a logarithmic formula that allows us to calculate what stage of civilization we are in K=(logo-6)/10. In this case, K is the civilization level and P is the total energy consumption of a civilization.

Dyson believes that humanity will reach the level of a first-class civilization in two hundred years, while Kardashev believes that humanity will step into a second-class civilization in three thousand years.

Regarding the latter scenario, the time it takes is too long for humans, and we do not know what will happen in the meantime. But if we follow this formula, the Earth will be at the 0.728 level of human civilization in 2018.

Why did Kardashev, a scientist of the last century, who already knew the scope of the universe, stop at the third level of civilization and not dare to continue to envision a fourth level of civilization?

Moreover, even if there was another division of civilization afterward, scientists often mentioned only the content within the third level of civilization, why do they hardly mention the fourth level of civilization, what is so terrible about the fourth level of civilization?

The horror of a level 4 civilization

From the point of view of the civilization level proposed by Kardashev, the positioning of a civilization level depends on its energy consumption, and from the basis of his classification, the level of civilization has to further utilize energy to upgrade.

Therefore, another perspective of civilization division is mainly about the resources that different civilizations can use and control. In this division of the hierarchy, the first level of civilization can dominate all the resources of the planets themselves; the second level of civilization is the entire solar system as their energy use and has been able to travel freely on the planets. Not only that, the civilization at this time was almost to the point of invulnerability, and the third-level civilization used the expansion to the galaxy, but can not let people imagine how exactly to survive.

In addition, there is also a level 4 civilization, which indeed extends to the entire universe as we imagine, and the energy they use is dark matter and dark energy.

Scientists speculate that the mass ratio of these two in the universe is as high as ninety-five percent, which means that by the time a level four civilization reaches, the entire universe is at its disposal.

A different perspective on the fourth level of civilization may give us greater sense. Earth today is not yet at the stage of a level one civilization, yet humans have already used all kinds of weapons capable of destroying the Earth. When Earth's civilization reaches level four, what will be our level of technology?

Moreover, has expanded beyond the galaxy, we then have a high chance of encountering alien civilizations. The collision of two civilizations is bound to be an extremely frightening contest. From the history of human development, we can see that the whole world is most likely to produce a contradiction, the most is not lacking is the figure of the war.

When these expand to the universe, the second level of civilization has been in an invulnerable state, to reach the fourth level of civilization of the interstellar, will be in the universe in peace?

That is why scientists are afraid to avoid it.

According to Kardashev's hierarchical vision, a level 3 civilization is already an unimaginable environment for human existence, let alone a higher level 4 civilization.

And from the perspective of human history, hegemony emerges when development is unbalanced, a phenomenon that becomes more pronounced as the power gap increases. If we extend this to the entire universe, we cannot expect every civilization to have ever been exposed to Confucian culture.