The Kardashev Scale

Yes, Isaac Arthur uploaded a video titled "Laser Pistols & Lightsabers" on his YouTube channel today. Yes, I watched the new video and it is as incredibly awesome as the video title suggests. No, I will not be making a post about it today. Just like his "Time Travel" video I am saving it for a special occasion. Why waste an in-depth analysis on an Actifit report when I can make a post on stemgeeks.net later and get some sweet, sweet STEM tokens?

Today it's about the Kardashev scale. Mostly because in past posts when that came up I linked to the Wikipedia entry for it and after today I can begin linking to this post when it comes up. The video on the top of the post is narration. The video at the end of the post includes music. Except for that the videos are identical in details.

The Kardashev scale description is generally the same as described in the Wikipedia entry. The video uses the Carl Sagan modified version of the scale Kardashev created in 1964. A Type I on Kardashev's original version is Type 1.1 on Sagan's. Type II and Type III remain unchanged.

The mathematical way of estimating the population along the Kardashev scale introduced around the 10:30 point in the video is something I am going to have to think some more about. A civilization a billion or more times larger than Earth's current population is an incredible thought to imagine. Millions of times more scientists and researchers means a huge amount of specialized fields of research can be spread around and covered.

Isaac Arthur states that a Kardashev Type III civilization might not be technically possible unless faster than light communication is possible or a workaround is found. I think the workaround would naturally evolve as the Kardashev Type II civilization expands across the galaxy. I imagine by the time the civilization becomes Type II it is transhumanist. If that civilization has embraced the concept of engineering their own biology then altering the galaxy shouldn't be that humongous of a next logical step. Move the stars using Shkadov thruster principle and then when in place turn the Shkadov thruster into a Dyson sphere. Granted that may take a few dozen million if not a billion or more years but a Type II can work on figuring out wormholes or some other workaround in the meantime. If nothing else works eventually all the stars would be grouped closer together and the galaxy would be smaller. Maybe instead of 100,000 light years the Milky Way could be made 20,000 light years across.