Year 102025: A meteorite the size of Pluto is headed toward Earth. Before it can cross Saturn's orbit, a group of probes intercept it. At the Space Security Center in Alaska, military personnel activate a laser. The solar system experiences a sudden flash, and nothing remains of the meteorite. Welcome to the future of the Type 2 civilization, a society capable of controlling and harnessing the entire energy of a star.
To reach the second level in the Kardashev scale, humanity will have to learn to extract energy not only from sources on Earth, but directly from the Sun. We are not talking about ordinary solar panels, but about an entire megastructure around the star: a Dyson Sphere. Science fiction? Absolutely. For now. But who knows, maybe it could be a technological goal within our reach in the next millennia.
The Dyson Sphere Dream
A Type 2 Civilization is not simply an evolution of our current society, but a giant leap in our ability to harness energy. It is not a matter of improving the efficiency of a wind farm or building more nuclear power plants, but of capturing the entire energy output of the Sun. The design that would allow this incredible feat was first proposed by Princeton University professor Freeman Dyson in 1960.
In modern terms, the Dyson Sphere is literally a colossal shell around a star and its nearest planets.
This sphere would collect all the energy of the star and convert it into electricity, releasing part of the heat in the form of infrared radiation. The radius of this megastructure reaches one astronomical unit, that is, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and the thickness of the material is about 3 meters.
What could possibly go wrong with such a massive structure? Actually, almost anything. The first obvious problem we would face if we were to attempt to build a Dyson Sphere is resources. The fact is that we would need about 1,5 × 10^24 tons of material. For comparison, this is the mass of the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter. So, to build a Dyson Sphere, humanity would have to process all reachable asteroids and then dismantle several rocky planets to obtain the necessary materials. And that's just the beginning.
A challenge that is more than titanic
If all the material needed to build it wasn't enough, the structure itself would have to be a perfect sphere, otherwise the Sun's gravity would crumple it like a tin foil ball. The materials for the sphere would also have to be extremely strong. After all, even the silicon carbide more advanced, considered more reliable than graphene, is unsuitable for this purpose.
But even if we could build this megastructure, it would still be very unstable. The fact is that the star inside the Dyson Sphere must be perfectly centered, and if, for example, a meteorite hits the structure from the outside and slightly changes its position, the sphere starts to move towards the Sun and collapses.
Does this mean that it is impossible to build such a megastructure? Not really.
In reality, humanity has simply misunderstood Freeman dyson. Its sphere is not a solid structure, but a collection of small satellites that form a swarm around a star. These capture solar radiation and send the energy to Earth or another receiver via wireless transmission.
For this reason, speaking of one “Dyson Swarm” already sounds more realistic. Of course, we will need technologies that allow us to transmit wireless energy, but such a structure would require much less material than a solid sphere. Furthermore, the stability of the swarm would be much greater.
Beyond the Sphere: “Dyson’s” Alternatives
If you think that the Dyson prefix only goes with the sphere or the swarm, you are wrong. There is also the Dyson bubble, a system of satellites with solar sails that do not rotate but appear to levitate around a star. Another option is the Dyson shell, a sort of sphere within which one can live. Then there is the Pakros shell o Niven's Ring, which can become alternatives to the Dyson Sphere.
But no matter which option humanity chooses, we will face problems. Even to build a single ring or a system of satellites, humanity will need many more resources than we have on Earth. So we will have no other choice. than looking for materials elsewhere. And while destroying some asteroids won't harm our system, the same can't be said for planets.
If we decide to dismantle Venus or Mars to obtain materials, for example, we would risk changing the orbit of our own planet. Furthermore, if we built a full-fledged Dyson Sphere, sunlight would not reach the planets beyond Earth's orbit. In that case, we can definitely forget about colonizing Mars or exploring Pluto. Furthermore, the first solar flare could partially disable any megastructure around the Sun.
Type 2 Civilizations, the Challenge of Unlimited Energy
I'm making it difficult for you, I know. But it's the truth, we are very far from things like that: and even if we got there we would have many accessory problems. To begin with: our star produces about 4 × 10^26 joules of energy per second. Even if a Dyson Sphere or Swarm could only intercept 10% of that volume, it would still be a boundless ocean of energy.
In just one second this megastructure would collect 40 trillion times more energy than humanity currently consumes in a day. An energy that should be transmitted and stored somehow.
The most effective way would be convert sunlight into antimatter, (today we don't even know how to store it, antimatter). Hypothetically there are several ways. The first is build magnetic field traps which prevent antimatter from coming into contact with matter. The second is keep it in an ultra-cold environment.
But none of these warehouses are 100% reliable when it comes to large amounts of unstable antimatter. And if we get it wrong, we risk an explosion much, much worse than a nuclear one. After all, when antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other and release a tremendous amount of energy.
Bottom line: From the perspective of a human in 2025, ANYTHING can go wrong with the Dyson Sphere, literally at every step of the way, from design to manufacturing to subsequent energy storage.
Daily life in a type 2 civilization
Let's pretend that when humanity becomes a type 2 civilization, we will understand physics much better and be able to build an infinite energy source. Will our problems end there? Maybe. But where will this type 2 civilization spend so much energy? For example, in the development of all the planets, satellites and other objects in the Solar System.
Humanity will be able to mine minerals in the Kuiper Belt, harvest hydrogen on Jupiter, or grow avocados on Phobos. Even more, with advanced hydroponic technologies we could turn Mars and its moons into huge automated farms.
New materials such as the graphene, the aerogel and who knows what else will become more widespread than plastic is today. With their help, humanity will be able to create advanced space suits with better protection from radiation, extreme temperatures and solar wind. In addition, these materials could be used in medicine. Humanity will forever forget about fractures and bone problems because we will be able to strengthen the skeleton with these materials.
In addition to this, gene editing will become very common. We will be able to change the color of our skin or our height. The most interesting thing is that this type 2 civilization will most likely not have computers, smartphones and similar gadgets that we are used to. They will be replaced by biological implants that would make even new technologies like brain-computer interfaces.
A (relative) safety
When humanity becomes a type 2 civilization, space threats such as giant asteroids will no longer worry us. In fact, any meteorite flying towards us from Oort cloud or from interstellar space will become a potential source of new resources. But if the object poses a direct threat to Earth, humanity will already have an effective weapon in its arsenal that can destroy it in seconds.
I imagine it as a kind of “Death Star”: a spherical satellite that orbits the Earth with a diameter of about 160 km. Inside it will be a tank of antimatter and when the Earth detects a dangerous asteroid approaching, the “Death Star” will fire a beam of antimatter to destroy it.
To destroy a space object, you only need to apply a force slightly greater than the gravity holding the object together. For this to happen, the mass of the antimatter shot must be equal to about 200 millionths of the mass of the meteorite. For example, the asteroid Apophis, which has flown extremely close to Earth on several occasions, has a mass of about 27 billion kg. It would take less than 5,4 kg of antimatter to destroy it.
The existential risks of super-technologies
I wonder: with the help of such a Death Star would it be possible to destroy any threat… or destroy each other? By the way, will the civilization of type 2 still have some division into countries, even if it will be significantly different from the modern one? Who knows: maybe we will try to imagine it another time.
Moreover, the greatest danger to humanity would not even come from within, but from without. For example, from representatives of another extraterrestrial civilization, perhaps quite hostile.
If they arrived in the Solar System, it would mean that they have probably already reached the next level on the Kardashev scale, the third. This is when the opportunities for interstellar travel open up. Such a civilization will no longer extract energy only from its own star, but from sources throughout the galaxy. And if it turns out to be aggressive, our “Death Star” will look like a child with a water pistol against a tsunami. Better to hide.
The real problem of a type 2 civilization: galactic invisibility
It seems obvious that one of the first tasks of the Type 2 civilization is not to reveal its existence. And this is almost impossible to do, and all because of the Dyson Sphere. The fact is that any megastructure around the Sun, be it a sphere, a swarm, a bubble or a ring, will emit part of the energy collected in the form of infrared radiation. And it is this radiation that will make us very visible to extraterrestrial civilizations.
Our scientists are already investigating the sources of infrared radiation, trying to find traces of type 2 civilizations in the universe. In 2015, Jason Wright of the University of Pennsylvania, within the G-HAT project, examined 100.000 galaxies in the infrared range and found not a single trace of advanced civilizations. Does this mean that there are no intelligent living beings in all these galaxies? Most likely not, on the contrary, they exist, but for some reason they are hiding from alien researchers.
Ask the dust
What if the dust was evidence of an advanced civilization? If so, Brian Lacki, a researcher at the University of California, believes that advanced civilizations could still easily extract the energy of a single star or even an entire galaxy. And a sort of alternative to the Dyson Swarm, the smart dust, “smart dust”, helps them do so.
According to Lacki, it would be a cluster of nanobots self-replicating dust that, like the megastructures we were talking about, collect energy around stars, nebulae, and other sources. Such dust would work much more efficiently than the Dyson Sphere because it would not be centralized and would be able to supply energy to colonies in different parts of the galaxy. And this is especially useful when interstellar travel is discovered and “charging points” in distant star systems are needed.
Cosmic Escape: The Stellar Engines
Even if humanity could develop intelligent dust in the stage of a Type 2 civilization, it would hardly help us to go unnoticed. And if a squadron of ships from a hostile civilization moved towards Earth, we would have only one thing to do: run away. However, we would have to take the entire Solar System with us.
The Dyson Sphere is not the only megastructure that we will be able to build in the future. Another precious invention for us will be the Star Engine. With its help, we would move the Sun, along with all the planets, along a given trajectory. But how can we move an entire star? There are actually several options.
The first is the Shkadov engine, named after its developer, the Soviet engineer Leonid Shkadov. Such a stellar engine is as simple as possible, it consists of a gigantic mirror that orbits the Sun, a sort of solar sail. This megastructure should be static, that is, not to rotate around the star, but to hang in one place. Thus the solar radiation becomes asymmetric, stronger on the side opposite to the sail. This is how the push would arise, forcing our Sun to move towards the sail. At the same time, planets and other objects in our Solar System would move together with the star.
Towards Infinity: Our Cosmic Destiny
Would we be able to escape our aggressive neighbors using the Shkadov thruster? If the sail itself reflects exactly half of the solar energy, it will generate a thrust force equal to about 128 × 10^16 newtons. That's impressive, but it won't help us. Sorry, just bad news. The fact is that with this kind of push, the Solar System will be able to reach a speed of 20 m per second in about a million years. And during this time we will cover a distance of only 300 of a light year. Only in a billion years will our speed increase to 20 km/s and during this time we will have traveled about 1/3 of the Milky Way, 34.000 light years. It seems that at this rate humanity will not escape anywhere.
Fortunately, the Shkadov drive is not our only option. The astronomer Matthew Caplan of the University of Illinois has proposed using solar plasma to push the Sun in a certain direction. A Caplan thruster it is in fact a giant jet engine that would be placed next to a star and use about 1.000 kg of its plasma every second. I saw a sci-fi movie, I think Chinese, with something like that. The entire structure would move constantly toward the Sun, emitting a beam of plasma from the opposite side of the star and a jet of oxygen isotope from the other. In this way, the engine would literally push the Sun in front of itself.
And this method is much more efficient than Shkadov's sail. The Caplan thruster would allow the Sun to reach a speed of 200 km/s in just 5 million years. So in 1 million years we will be able to cover a distance of over 30 light years. This means that we would pass by the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, in 130.000 years.
But we could move even faster. Alexander Svoronos of Yale University has proposed combining the Shkadov and Caplan thrusters into a single megastructure, Svoronos' star tug. As you can see, we are witnessing a real battle between scientists to see who can tell the biggest lie.
Svoronos proposes to install a solar-powered engine instead of Shkadov's sail. This would literally act as a tugboat, dragging the star. In theory, Svoronos' star tug would be able to accelerate the Sun to 27% of the speed of light. This is just over 880.000 km/second. However, to reach this speed, the engine would have to use so much fuel that the Sun would turn into a brown dwarf. In short, humanity would be able to escape the ships of the Type 3 civilization, but at what cost?
Type 2 Civilization: The “Copperfield” Option
In any case, we still have an option to escape this terrible reality: literally vanish. Like David Copperfield's tricks. Remember I told you about smart dust that could replace a Dyson Sphere or Swarm? Each of these tiny dust particles containing nanoelectronics could connect with others to form a network. The scientist Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute and the Astronomer Royal Martin rees They believe that an advanced civilization could upload its consciousness into such a network. If humanity could do this, we would exist simultaneously in all corners of the Milky Way, and our galaxy would literally come to life.
And would you be willing to upload yourself into a tiny speck of cosmic dust? I leave you with this question, and all the time you need to find an answer.
