A Futuristic Perspective

Do you recall the joke about Earth being a student alien's homework with a C- grade lying in the corner of their room? Another theory is that advanced alien civilizations haven't visited us because humanity has caused too much destruction on the planet. This explanation seems reasonable considering recent events, but what if the reason we haven't encountered aliens is that they haven't emerged yet, and humanity is the first civilization in their study? Scientists Robin Hansen, Daniel Martin, Calvin McCarter, and Jonathan Paulson explore this thesis in detail, suggesting that humanity appeared very early in the history of civilizations in the universe. Despite Earth being considered an unusual planet, it's not so rare that other types of planets couldn't give rise to intelligent life. Before delving into this study, let's look back to 1983 when theoretical physicist Brandon Carter investigated the likelihood of intelligent life emerging on Earth given time constraints. Carter modeled this as a challenging problem.

Some crucial steps in the evolutionary process that led to the emergence of intelligent life, such as the development of eukaryotes, would have been challenging to achieve in most Earth-like planets due to the limited time available. This conclusion was drawn by Brandon Carter based on the time it took for our own evolution. Carter identified six challenging steps that a civilization must go through to reach our level of technological advancement, including biogenesis, the evolution of bacteria, eukaryotes, combo Genesis, or sex, metazoans, and intelligence.

In the first part of the essay, the authors divided aliens into two types: loud and quiet. Loud aliens are those that expand rapidly, live for a long time, and change their volume significantly, while quiet aliens do not meet at least one of these criteria. Due to their elusiveness, the density of quiet aliens is uncertain. Therefore, the article focuses more on loud aliens, providing models for them, including the number of difficult steps required for the origin of an alien life form, the speed of transformation of a quiet alien into a visible loud one, and the speed of expansion of civilization. Scientist David Moore noted that civilization emerges in their models, turns into an expansive civilization, and spreads until it encounters a neighbor where it stops.

According to a theory, the existence of advanced civilizations in the universe is prevented to a certain extent due to certain parameters that make them invisible to us. This theory suggests that expansive civilizations control up to 50% of the universe and will eventually control about a million galaxies. However, if that's the case, why haven't we detected any electromagnetic radiation from these distant galaxies yet? Researchers such as Robin Hanson, Daniel Martin, Calvin McCarter, and Jonathan Polson have used a model called the "hard step model" to show that the only way to explain the absence of visible civilizations is to assume that we emerged very early in the history of civilization in the universe.

According to the Kardashev scale, which classifies civilizations by their level of energy consumption, humanity is only approaching a Type 1 civilization. This means that we are able to use all the energy of our home planet, as well as all the energy we can produce there, such as solar and wind energy. Physicist Michio Kaku believes that by reaching this level of civilization, we will be able to harness the power of the entire solar system.

In summary, this theory implies that we might be the first civilization in the universe, which is quite a remarkable thought, especially considering the fact that we live on a planet where even bananas are sometimes individually wrapped in cellophane film.

According to the Kardashev scale, which classifies civilizations based on their energy consumption, humanity is currently approaching Type 1, or a planetary civilization. This type of civilization has the ability to use all the energy from its planet, including solar energy, and can control natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and weather. Physicist Michio Kaku believes that it will take us another 100 to 200 years to achieve Type 1 status, which will allow us to live in underwater cities and eliminate the problems of global warming.

Type 2 civilizations, on the other hand, begin their journey in outer space and use energy from the sun and other planets. This will elevate humanity to an interplanetary civilization that can use the total energy potential of the star. However, it may take us another thousand to two thousand years to reach this level, and even longer to become a Type 3 civilization. Type 3 civilizations have the energy of an entire galaxy at their disposal, which will take humanity hundreds of thousands of years or more to achieve.

Kardashev's theory only goes up to Type 3 civilizations, but some prognosticators of his time believed that if Type 4 civilizations could harness the energy of the entire universe, then Type 5 civilizations would function similarly, but on a universal scale.

Is there such a thing as a type 6 civilization? The idea of a Multiverse attracting energy from multiple universes makes it difficult for humanity to comprehend. Such beings would have god-like powers, able to control time and space, even create universes with a snap of their fingers. As for the seventh type, it is beyond the scope of current scientific understanding. As it stands, humanity is only on its way to achieving type one status, using solar and wind energy. Unfortunately, we have not been responsible enough in addressing ecological issues like global warming, which may result in us living in underwater cities. This may be our fate, but it's a different story altogether, perhaps like the people of Atlantis.