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Personal background |
We can rank civilizations by their energy consumption, using the following principles:
1) The laws of thermodynamics. Especially the Second Law, and can hence be ranked by the energy at their disposal.
2) The laws of stable matter. Baryonic matter (e.g. based on protons and neutrons) tends to clump into three large groupings: planets, stars and galaxies. Thus, their energy will also be based on three distinct types, and this places upper limits on their rate of energy consumption.
3) The laws of planetary evolution. Any advanced civilization must grow in energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes (e.g. meteor impacts, ice ages, supernovas, etc.). This places mathematical lower limits on the rate of growth of these civilizations.
Advanced civilizations can therefore be grouped in three types: Type I, II, and III, which have mastered planetary, stellar and galactic forms of energy, respectively. Energy consumption of these three types of civilization would be separated by a factor of many billions.
The earth receives about one billionth of the suns energy, and that humans utilize about one millionth of that. So we consume about one million billionth of the suns total energy. At present, our entire planetary energy production is about 10 billion billion ergs per second. But our energy growth is rising exponentially, and hence we can calculate how long it will take to rise to Type II or III status.
Look how far we have come in energy uses once we figured out how to manipulate energy, how to get fossil fuels really going, and how to create electrical power from hydropower. We've come up in energy uses in a remarkable amount in just a couple of centuries.
Within 200 years or so, we should attain Type I status. In fact, growing at a modest rate of 1% per year it would take only 3,200 years to reach Type II status, and 5,800 years to reach Type III status. |
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
A Type I civilization is a truly planetary one, which has mastered most forms of planetary energy. It has enough energy to modify the weather, alter the course of earthquakes, volcanoes, and build cities on their oceans.
Currently, our energy output qualifies us for Type 0 status. We derive our energy not from harnessing global forces, but by burning dead plants. But already, we can see the seeds of a Type I civilization: The beginning of a planetary language (English), a planetary communication system (the Internet), a planetary economy (the forging of the European Union), and even the beginnings of a planetary culture (via mass media, TV, rock music etc).
By definition, an advanced civilization must grow faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes. A Type I civilization must master space travel to deflect space debris. Ice ages may take place on a time scale of tens of thousands of years, so a Type I civilization must learn to modify the weather within that time frame.
Artificial and internal catastrophes must also be negotiated. But the problem of global pollution is only a mortal threat for a Type 0 civilization; a Type I civilization has lived for several millennia as a planetary civilization, necessarily achieving ecological planetary balance. Internal problems like wars do pose a serious recurring threat, but they have thousands of years in which to solve racial, national, and sectarian conflicts.
After several thousand years, a Type I civilization will exhaust the power of a planet, and will derive their energy by consuming the entire output of their suns energy, or roughly a billion trillion trillion ergs per second.
With their energy output comparable to that of a small star, they should be visible from space. A Type II civilization may even build a gigantic sphere around their star to more efficiently utilize its total energy output. From outer space, their planet may glow like a Christmas tree.
Please visit the Open SETI Initiative http://openseti.org/
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