What would the top civilization in the universe look like?

Usually, the universe we discuss actually refers to the "observable universe" (also called the "Hubble volume"), which is a spherical space with the Earth as the center and a diameter of 93 billion light-years. , which is also the limit of what we can see in the universe now. According to the observations of astronomers, the "observable universe" has at least trillions of galaxies, and almost every galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars. More importantly, there is not nothingness outside the "observable universe". There is a wider space.

The universe is not only unimaginably large, but its "age" is also considerable. If the "age" of the universe is compressed into one year, then we humans will probably appear on December 31 of this year. 10:30 pm.

From this we can reasonably infer that in such a vast universe, there must be many intelligent civilizations. They may appear on December 30 of this year, or they may appear on November 6th, or even January 20th of this year. Generally speaking, on the premise that these civilizations have not disappeared until now, the earlier they appear, the higher their level of civilization will be. Such speculation inevitably makes people curious, what would the top civilization in the universe look like?

It should be pointed out that the above speculations are not the random thoughts of a few people. In fact, the vast majority of scientists do not object to this view. In order to facilitate the distinction between the levels of these possible intelligent civilizations, as early as In 1964, astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed the famous concept of "Kardashev civilization level", which was generally recognized by people.

The "Kardashev Civilization Level" is based on the magnitude of the civilization's average power consumption. Why should it be based on this? This is because Nikolai Kardashev believes that the technological level of a civilization is positively related to the magnitude of its average power consumption. According to his vision, intelligent civilizations in the universe are divided into three levels, in order from low to high, they are Type I civilization, Type II civilization and Type III civilization (Note: There are still many transitions between these civilizations. sexual civilization).

It can be seen that according to this setting, Type III civilization should be the top civilization in the universe. The author believes that before discussing Type III civilization, we should first take a look at how many Type I civilizations there are. Let’s talk about how awesome it is.

According to scientists’ assumptions, the technology mastered by Type I civilizations allows them to completely control their own planet, including all resources and the state of the entire planet. They can control the atmosphere, oceans and even planets on the planet at will. Internal material changes. In other words, for Type I civilizations, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, extreme weather, and global warming are not a problem. They can build their planet into a "paradise". As long as their planet remains, Type I civilization Civilization can survive forever.

Some people may ask after seeing this. It is said that our civilization index is now 0.73. It seems that we will soon reach Type I civilization, but why are we not that powerful? When will mankind enter Type I civilization?

In fact, this index of 0.73 is based on the civilization index calculation formula proposed by the famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan in 1973 (as shown in the figure below, where K represents Civilization index, P represents the power consumption of civilization).

We substitute the average power consumption of human civilization 2 The average power consumption reaches 10^16 (watts), and the civilization index (K) is equal to 1. In other words, we humans must increase our power consumption to 500 times the current average power consumption before we can be considered to have entered a Type I civilization.

Where does so much energy come from? The fossil fuels we are using now are obviously not effective, so humans must look for more powerful energy, such as solar energy, nuclear energy or antimatter.

However, the actual situation is that although there is a lot of solar energy reaching the earth, it is too scattered, and humans cannot fully utilize it in a short time. In the field of nuclear energy, the energy generated by nuclear fission is too little, and resources It is also very limited, and controllable nuclear fusion seems to be still out of reach. As for antimatter, we can only talk about it now...

So it can be said that it is still necessary for humans to enter a Type I civilization. A lot of time, even the most optimistic estimate would take at least 100 years.

We can see that even Type I civilization is a crushing existence for our current civilization. So what will Type III civilization, the top civilization in the universe, look like?

To put it simply, Type III civilizations are the absolute masters of their own galaxies. They can control any matter in their own galaxies as they wish. Even black holes may be completely controlled by them, and their form of existence , and the technology they possess, a civilization like ours with only level 0.73 is simply unimaginable.

What? You said that Type III civilization is not the top civilization in the universe. Above them, there is also Type IV civilization that can control the entire universe? From the perspective of logical reasoning, this possibility is still possible, but to be honest, Type III civilization is already the limit of what we can imagine based on the known laws of the universe, and anything further should be considered science fiction.