Has human technology reached its peak, how much room for development is there in the future, and what is the direction of civilization?

Recently, some netizens asked: Has the development of human science and technology reached the limit? Do friends who hold this view feel too comfortable now that they have such an idea? So how big is the future development space of science and technology, let's discuss together.

First, let’s talk about how long the history of human science and technology is.

Human history has been millions of years since the beginning of the apes. Archaeological, biological and genetic studies believe that about 8 million years ago, human ancestors and chimpanzee ancestors parted ways, and they no longer want to be silly animals and become "higher primates that walk on two legs." The latest discovery of archaeology is that in 2000, in the Tugen Mountain area of ​​Kenya, Africa, the fossils of primitive people (Tugen species) dating back 6 million years were found, commonly known as the Millennium. This is the earliest ape-man fossil ever discovered.

The history of human science and technology development is very slow. The reason why apes are counted as human ancestors is that they learned to use fire and simple tools. People call this era the Stone Age. The Stone Age is a long one, going through stages such as the Paleolithic Age, the Mesolithic Age, and the Neolithic Age, and it has gone through millions of years. Modern research generally starts 2.5 million years ago and ends 10,000 years ago.

After the end of the Neolithic Age, human beings entered the primitive farming age. Chinese historiography research divides the history after the Neolithic Age into ancient history, ancient history, modern history, and modern history. Ancient history belongs to the period of myths and legends. In our country, Pangu opened the world, Nuwa created man, and the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors belonged to this period; ancient history has been around for about 5,000 years from Xia, Shang and Zhou to Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties; while modern history is from the Opium War in 1840. From the beginning, to the establishment of New China; modern history refers to 1949 to today.

The overall development of human civilization is showing a gradual acceleration trend.

From the above historical development, we can see that the progress of human civilization as a whole started very slowly. The Stone Age took millions of years, primitive farming took tens of thousands of years, and the farming era took thousands of years. Even after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the farming method of "hoeing the weeds at noon, sweating the weeds into the soil" has continued for a long time; and it is not long before the world has truly begun to use the laws of nature to transform the world into a brighter era.

If we look at the history of science and technology development in China, the sprout of modern science with the guidance of scientific theories and mathematics, physics and chemistry only started in modern times. The most notable symbol is the Westernization Movement initiated by enlightened people of the Qing Dynasty in 1860. Through limited reform and opening up, some advanced science and technology and machine manufacturing technology were introduced in the world, allowing China to enter the machine age from the farming age.

The world's modern science started much earlier than China, and the more prominent changes can be traced back to the era of Copernicus in the 16th century. It was he who discovered the heliocentric theory, which shook the geocentric theory that had ruled for more than a thousand years, and shook the religious trinity of God. Creation theory. Since then, a large number of scientific pioneers such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton have invented modern scientific instruments such as telescopes, and scientific theories such as mechanics, optics, and mathematics have been established and developed. In the future, scientific research began to truly move towards experimental verification, with quantitative analysis as the main scientific method, relying on imagination and reasoning, and the era of replacing natural science with philosophical thought is over.

This is 500 years ago. Therefore, it can be said that human beings have only entered the age of science and technology for only 500 years.

Humanity has entered the era of light from darkness, but the level of civilization is still very low.

After that, a large number of scientific masters such as Darwin, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, Marie Curie, Einstein, and Planck came one after another. Under the guidance of their theories, human civilization developed faster and faster: in the 17th century, human beings entered The machine age powered by steam engines; the 19th century entered the electrical age; the 20th century entered the nuclear energy age, and soon entered the computer-centered information age; after entering the 21st century, communication technology, quantum technology, cosmology research, genetics , Aerospace science and technology are developing rapidly, it is changing with each passing day.

Human beings have entered the bright era of mechanization, electrification and automation from the dark and heavy manual labor era. It can be said that since the beginning of this century, the progress of human science and technology civilization has entered an exponentially rising high-speed channel. But this can be said that the development of human science and technology is approaching the limit, and it is over? In fact, it is still early. The current level of human technology has not even reached the primary level.

Why do you say that? This is because our current technology is only changing with each passing day by comparing ourselves with our own past. The development in the past was too slow. Now we have entered the fast lane. Of course, it seems to be much faster. But how capable are humans currently? In the universe, the power of human beings is still very small, and even the earth on which they live can not be handled.

A big tsunami or a big earthquake will cause heavy losses to human beings. If there are huge disasters such as global climate change, major changes in the tectonic plates, and global volcanic eruptions, human beings may be wiped out. All of this is because the current scientific and technological civilization of mankind is still very weak.

So does human beings have the ability to overcome the biggest disaster on earth? Of course, as long as human beings are given enough time to develop, the capabilities of human civilization will be greatly improved, not only to defeat and control the earth, but also to control the solar system and even the Milky Way. This is the so-called third-level civilization theory of the universe.

The measurement standard of the third-level civilization of the universe.

This theory was created by former Soviet scientist Kardashev in the 1960s. After the theory came out, although there has been controversy in the scientific community, it has been recognized by most scientists, especially researchers who are looking for extraterrestrial civilizations and the development trend of human civilization in the future. This theory divides cosmic civilization into three levels. The first level is planetary-level civilization, which is the lowest level of civilization; the second level is stellar civilization, which is medium-level civilization; the third level is galaxy-level civilization, which is high-level civilization. civilization.

The criteria for dividing these three civilizations are based on the energy of the galaxy and stars where they are located, and the ability of the civilization to control how much energy it can use for interstellar communication in the universe. When the energy controlled and utilized reaches the total amount radiated from the stars to the planet where the civilization is located, the first-level civilization has been achieved; when the controlled and utilized energy has reached the sum of the energy emitted by the stars of this level, the second-level civilization has been achieved; the total amount of controlled and utilized energy has reached When the energy of the galaxy at this level is summed up, the third-level civilization is realized.

As a human being, it is based on the energy radiated by the sun and the total energy radiation of the Milky Way. The total radiation energy of the sun is about 3.78*10^26J/s (joules/second); the energy radiated from the sun to the earth is one-2.2 billionth of the total solar radiation, about 1.72*10^17J/s; The total energy radiation is about 200 billion times that of the sun, or 7.56*10^37J/s.

The current level of human civilization.

According to the "World Energy Statistical Yearbook 2020" data released by BP (British Petroleum), the world's total power generation in 2019 reached 27 trillion kWh, each kWh is equivalent to 3,600,000J, and the total energy provided by power generation throughout the year is equivalent to 9.72*10^ 19J. If this total amount is converted into energy per second, it is only about 3.1*10^12J/s, which is only 0.0018% of the control energy requirements of a first-level civilization, and even a 0.1-level civilization has not reached it.

And only a small part of the total power generation is used for cosmic interstellar communication, so if we measure it according to the standard of Kardashev's third-level civilization, we know how low-level human civilization is, right? However, the scientific community has long believed that the energy consumption of human beings has reached 2*10^13J/s, reaching a level of 0.73 civilization. This is probably the energy used by humans to eat, drink, burn wood, burn coal, burn oil and burn gas. .

But no matter what, human civilization is still at a very low stage. According to this civilization upgrade requirement, the energy requirement for the upgrade of the civilization index increases by an order of magnitude. Every time the civilization is upgraded by 0.1 index, the energy must increase by an order of magnitude, that is, 10 times. This has been superimposed. To reach the first-level civilization, the total amount of energy used by human beings must be increased by thousands of times on the current basis; to reach the second-level civilization, it is necessary to increase the energy control use of the first-level civilization by more than 10 billion times.

The main bottleneck for the upgrading of human civilization is energy.

Judging from the above-mentioned standards for civilization upgrading, the demand for energy has increased exponentially, so that humans cannot reach the first-level civilization relying on fossil fuels. Only by developing controllable nuclear fusion and using all the heavy hydrogen in seawater for human power generation, it is possible to realize the first-level civilization of mankind; and to achieve the second-level civilization, even if all the deuterium in the seawater is squeezed out, it is impossible to achieve such a huge Therefore, only by wrapping the sun and using all the sun's energy for its own use can it meet the energy demand. This is the origin of the Dyson sphere.

The third-level civilization theory, the Dyson sphere theory, these several civilization upgrade theories are linked together. Some people scoff at the Dyson sphere theory and think it's just nonsense. But the upgrade of human civilization requires such a huge amount of energy, which cannot be achieved without Dyson spheres. This is also the basis that scientists use when looking for extraterrestrial civilizations. If there is a civilization that has reached the level of secondary civilization in the universe, it will transform the local star system and build a Dyson sphere to wrap the stars, so that we can observe the light changes of the stars there. abnormal.

Unfortunately, so far, astronomers have surveyed and scanned millions of surrounding stars. Although several suspected Dyson spheres have been found, they have not been confirmed or denied, which means that there is no reliable evidence that the universe we see is in the universe. There are secondary civilizations.

Through these analyses, do you still think that human technology has reached its limit? All I can say is that human scientific and technological civilization has only just begun, and there is still a long way to go in the future, and one theoretical breakthrough after another must be achieved in order to continuously upgrade human scientific and technological civilization.

Human civilization has a long road ahead, and as long as it is not destroyed, there is hope.

Some scientists predict that it will take 200 years for mankind to reach the first-level civilization; to reach the second-level civilization, it will take 5,000 years; to reach the third-level civilization? It is still unpredictable, but it is generally believed that it will take at least hundreds of millions of years, or even hundreds of millions of years.

The big question now is, can human civilization last so long? Maybe hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, will human beings be destroyed by natural and man-made disasters? No one knows now. However, the consensus of the scientific community is that the longer human civilization develops, the stronger the ability to resist disasters, and the possibility of extinction will decrease exponentially.

Reaching the first-level civilization, human beings will no longer be afraid of natural and man-made disasters from the earth, and can completely control our homeland; reaching the second-level civilization, human beings will no longer be afraid of natural disasters from the solar system, and the sun will become a small universe controlled by human beings; Reaching the third-level civilization, human beings will no longer fear almost any cosmic disaster, and only the destruction of the universe or the demise of consciousness can exterminate human beings.

Whether human beings can achieve civilization upgrade, the key is that the various disasters encountered in the next few hundred years can be within the range that human beings can bear and will not become extinct. This is a long-standing question, a question of the future, and a question of all generations of mankind. But human beings must start from now on and work hard from generation to generation. First of all, if you don’t want to die, you will not die soon. All countries must abandon selfish thoughts, unite and cooperate, and develop scientifically, so that the human blood can last longer.