The Kardashev Scale

Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the black-veiled sea?

Beyond the darkness of the night, and past the very slim fringes of our own galaxy - have you ever considered what might be out there, harnessing energy to build an alien life?

A Soviet astronomer by the name of Nikolai Kardashev undoubtedly did, and what he found was revolutionizing. Kardashev in his pursuit discovered the Kardashev Scale, a method of evaluating extraterrestrial systems based entirely on their technological prowess. Upon publication in 1964, this theory soon became the driving force of innovation and altered the perspective of modern astronomy.

The Kardashev Scale: Decoded

The Kardashev Scale aims to explore the interconnected pathways between Energy and the continued sustenance of a civilization. His system has the capability to categorize any hypothetical extraterrestrial model into one of three groups, based entirely on their energy consumption. Type I was considered any planet that resembles our own and employs relatively the same energy consumption patterns. Hence he believed that such planets should be able to control their own natural calamities such as earthquakes, and volcanoes. The second group or Type II was, as Kardashev conveyed in his 1964 research paper, any “civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star". Here, he advocated that this must be possible through the construction of the famed ‘Dyson Sphere’; a hypothetical megastructure that surrounds a star, capable of absorbing a majority of its energy.

Finally, the last category posited by the scale was Type III, wherein the aforementioned civilisation has the capability to harness the energy of its galaxy. In his much-debated paper, he further included approximate measures of energy for each level and correspondingly detailed a length of equations to arrive at them.

Given the advancement of technology, scientists have further been able to posit more categories than the initial three, and together they compose a branch of astronomy grouped under Kardashev’s initial principles.

The Future of the Scale

Conclusion