An Intergalactic Culture

To measure the level of a civilization’s advancement, the Kardashev scale focuses on the amount of energy that a civilization is able to harness. Obviously, the amount of power available to a civilization is linked to how widespread the civilization is (you can’t harness the power of a star if you are confined to your home planet, and you certainly can’t harness the power of a galaxy if you can’t even get out of your solar system).

In short, according to the Kardashev scale, Interstellar Travelers = Advanced society.

In a previous article, we offered an overview of the various civilization types: Subglobal Cultures, Galactic Cultures, Multiverse Cultures, etc. We’ve already discussed a Subglobal Culture, a Planetary Culture, a Stellar Culture, and a Galactic Culture. Today, we want to talk about what it would be like to live in a Type IV Civilization—a culture that can harness the energy of the cosmos.

Beyond Kardashev

Complete disclosure here: Kardashev believed a Type IV civilization was too advanced—that no species could ever reach that level—so he didn’t go beyond Type III on his scale. So we can all go home, right? This whole Kardashev scale thing is all over?

Not quite.

Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin weighed in on what could exist beyond Kardashev’s initial scale. Zubrin proposed metrics other than pure energy use that could help species excel beyond what a Type III civilization would be capable of. One classification he suggested is simply the ‘mastery’ of a planet, system, galaxy, galactic group, etc. Similarly, Carl Sagan suggested adding another dimension in addition to pure energy usage: the information available to the civilization. And in his book, Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku discussed a Type IV civilization that could harness “extragalactic” energy sources, such as dark energy.

The first two are rather self-explanatory, but let’s dive a little deeper into what it would mean to truly harness the power of the cosmos, as Kaku suggests.