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00:00The sun releases about 380 septillion watts of energy every second.
00:07That's more than a million times more than the Earth uses in a year, every second.
00:12It does this by converting 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium 60 times a minute, over and over again.
00:21Imagine what a Type II civilization could do with all that juice.
00:30The Kardashev Scale was developed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev
00:36as a means to measure the rate of advancement that any given civilization has acquired.
00:40It does this primarily by examining the amount of energy that that civilization is able to utilize.
00:46Initially, there were only three levels to the scale, but that number has since risen to five as standard, or seven by some counts.
00:53A Type I civilization can harness all of the energy of its home planet.
00:57A Type II can harness the energy of its entire planetary system.
01:00For Type III, it's their entire galaxy.
01:03With Type IV, it's the universe.
01:05And a Type V civilization can harness all of the energy of every universe, assuming a multiverse.
01:11For extended versions, there's also Type VI, which basically has god-like capabilities,
01:16and Type Zero at the other end, which hasn't yet mastered even its own planet.
01:20According to most estimations, humanity currently ranks at a modest .7 on the Kardashev Scale.
01:26If humanity were to accomplish a Type II level of advancement, they would first have to have all the capabilities of a Type I.
01:32This means that we would have full control over our home planet, Earth.
01:36We'd be producing enough energy from wind, thermal, hydro, and every other renewable energy solution available,
01:42to the point that we wouldn't need fossil fuels anymore.
01:45We'd also be able to fully utilize all of the solar energy that currently reaches our planet from the sun.
01:50It'd be more than just harvesting power sources, though.
01:53A Type I society would have complete planetary control, meaning it could predict and manipulate all weather patterns,
01:59including rain, wind, and cloud coverage, as well as controlling specific natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.
02:07It's also expected that, by the time we reach Type I status, we'll have expanded into floating cities on the ocean.
02:13Estimates vary as to how long it'll take us to complete Type I,
02:16but the physicist Michio Kaku has predicted it'll take another 100 to 200 years.
02:22The trademark of a Type II civilization, the one we're most interested in today,
02:26isn't that it can control its home planet, but that it can fully harness the energy from its home star.
02:31In our case, that's the sun.
02:33If humanity was a Type II civilization, it would be taking all of the energy the sun produces,
02:38more than 38,000 septillion watts per second, and using it all for its own needs.
02:43Quite how a civilization would go about doing this is a mystery to modern science.
02:47But there are some ideas, the most famous of which being the Dyson Sphere.
02:51A Dyson Sphere is a structure that somehow encircles the sun and absorbs all of the energy released by it.
02:57That energy is then somehow stored with maximum efficiency,
03:01before being transferred elsewhere for use, again with maximum efficiency.
03:05At this stage, humanity will most likely have spread out all across the solar system,
03:09so splitting the untold solar power between Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter, and everywhere else would be a massive undertaking.
03:17The Dyson Sphere itself, however, might also be fully habitable.
03:21At the time of its completion, it would most likely be the most massive structure humanity had ever built until that point,
03:27and easily big enough for some humans, like the technicians trained to run it, to live actually on or in it.
03:33If that were the case, then anyone listing the Dyson Sphere as their primary address
03:37would have a unique, extremely close and perhaps quite unsettling view of the sun.
03:42A Dyson Sphere shouldn't represent a health risk to a Type II civilization, though.
03:46By the time humanity becomes advanced enough to build something like this,
03:50we should have worked out and sidestepped all the dangers involved.
03:53Which means we'd have shielded ourselves from the otherwise intense radiation,
03:57and might even be able to look at the sun up close without damaging our eyes,
04:01maybe through some solar-grade windows or specialist goggles.
04:04But, why would we ever want or need such a high level of control, or such an incredible amount of energy?
04:10In some variations of the Dyson Sphere idea,
04:13it might be that this immense piece of machinery could actually serve to lengthen the lifetime of the sun,
04:18buying Earth and the solar system specifically more time before our star goes red giant.
04:23For Freeman Dyson, though, the mind behind the sphere,
04:26it's more simply a natural progression for any space-faring civilization.
04:30Any alien society that continues to advance and settle on other planets
04:34would need to consume greater and greater amounts of energy
04:37until its home star becomes the only source in its planetary system which offers enough.
04:41The opportunities available to a civilization at this stage, though, would be incredible to today's mind.
04:47Not only would we have spread out across the solar system,
04:50but we'd have likely mastered all of its many environments, too.
04:53Getting to and living on Mars would be easy.
04:56Exploring the subsurface oceans believed to exist on places like Europa and Enceladus would be a breeze.
05:01We'd be able to build working colonies on any solar system body we wanted to.
05:06Our spaceships at this point would be so much more improved as well,
05:09utilizing possible technologies such as laser ion engines or nuclear fusion itself
05:14to give us infinitely faster access from Mercury to maybe even the Oort Cloud.
05:18And, not only would we have all of that, but it would also be much more difficult to kill us off.
05:23The destruction of humanity would be a lot harder to achieve.
05:26In fact, if we were a Type Two civilization,
05:29there'd be very little currently known to or suspected by science that could wipe us out.
05:34Asteroid impacts, which we're now unable to prevent, for example, would be easy to handle.
05:38At Type Two, we could disintegrate an oncoming rock,
05:41or potentially even move the Earth, or whichever planet we're on at the time, out of its path.
05:47In general, though, for anything to threaten the whole of humanity,
05:50it would now have to threaten the whole of the solar system.
05:53So, one asteroid heading for one planet wouldn't spell the doom it does now.
05:57In a worst-case scenario, humans would just evacuate that planet before the impact happened.
06:02We wouldn't be invincible, though.
06:04There would still be some doomsday eventualities,
06:06like the appearance of a black hole nearby or universe-wide vacuum decay,
06:10which we'd still have no hope of outrunning.
06:13Plus, war would remain a viable threat,
06:15either between ourselves or against some other space-faring civilization.
06:19It's thought a Type Two society would still operate governments,
06:22to manage things like trade, communication, or conflicts between the various planets,
06:27moons, and asteroids in a star system.
06:29There could still be competition and rivalry between these worlds,
06:33despite them all being united by the Dyson Sphere tasked to power them.
06:36And there'd still be a potentially dangerous next frontier to aim for and work towards,
06:41interstellar travel.
06:42According to the Kardashev Scale,
06:44the next move for a Type Two civilization would be to expand into other star systems,
06:49in a bid to reach Type Three.
06:51In our case, this would mean heading for Alpha Centauri,
06:54a three-star system that's 4.3 light-years away from us,
06:57and colonizing it in the same way as, by then,
07:00we would've already done with the next solar system.
07:02And from Alpha Centauri, it'd be on to the next star system,
07:06as humanity spreads out across the galaxy,
07:08seemingly becoming more and more indestructible as it does so.
07:12Before any of this becomes possible, however,
07:14we must first become a Type Two civilization.
07:17As is widely reported and commented on,
07:19the current generation appears to exist at a very precarious time in human history.
07:24It holds the power to save this planet Earth, or destroy it.
07:27And what we choose to do with that power will make or break our future.
07:31The Kardashev Scale can seem like a set, even predetermined pathway,
07:35but it's the choices a civilization makes which determine how its future unfolds.
07:47And that's what would happen if humanity were a Type Two civilization.
07:51What do you think? Is there anything we missed?
07:53Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled,
07:56and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.
08:01Thanks for watching.