How Does Earth Achieve Higher Ranking on the Kardashev Scale?

Ethan Wong

July 12, 2024

The Earth is currently a 0.73 on the Kardashev Scale, which is a system that ranks civilizations on their level of development and technological advancements. One major component that is assessed is a civilization’s usage of energy. For example, a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale is capable of harnessing their own planet’s energy, such as containing a tsunami and powering technology with its energy. A Type II civilization can harness energy of the star in its star system, in which a body like Earth could capture and use all the Sun’s energy ever emitted rather than relying on solar panels that lie far away and only capture a small fraction of the Sun’s energy. Type III civilizations control the energy of every star in their galaxy, which is essentially incomprehensible given Earth’s progress in technology. 

In his 1960 paper “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation,” Freeman Dyson speculated on how alien civilizations would continue to expand their energy sources given their exponential growth, and therefore energy intake. He theorized what became known as Dyson Spheres: giant structures that encapsulated a body’s host star and used its energy in its entirety. The material that would make up Dyson’s model could vary with an alien civilization’s potential, such as hardware and satellites, material from other planets or masses in their star system, or other technology incomprehensible to humans. While human space technology is nowhere near capable of a mission like this, human technology in general has proven the potential for such an initiative in the future; for instance, the advancements of automated electronics and transportation, AI development, 3d-printing capabilities (currently with rockets), and others are all great resources that directly translate to future innovations to make Earth a Type I and Type II civilization. We will focus on Type II with regards to Dyson Spheres for the sake of this article.

With visible light, a Dyson Sphere could be indicated by a slightly dimmed/darkened star. However, Dyson mentioned that these crazy constructions would give off energy known as “waste heat” in infrared light to avoid overheating. Astronomers utilize Infrared Excess Emissions (IEE) to observe potential candidates for Dyson Spheres; however, there can be a multitude of other reasons that would cause an excess of infrared radiation and falsely lift spirits regarding the existence of Dyson’s idea. For instance, the extra radiation being analyzed could be given off from dust/gas clouds surrounding a young developing star. Moreover, a galaxy emitting infrared could be positioned behind a certain star, causing it to become an imposter among the data gathered. While the likelihood of a Type II civilization is closer to zero, SETI continues to utilize their Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to look for these astronomical occurrences, even ranging to radio signals or other obscure events. In fact, one sight did become hugely popular as astronomer Tabetha Boyajian located a star that experienced dimming, known as KIC 8462852. Despite most of these being influenced by random astronomical events, it is still fun to explore and think about.  

Just recently, researchers studied data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite and believed to have singled out 7 potential stars that could have a Dyson Sphere. In my opinion, this is 99% some random astronomical occurrence. However, it’s still fun to hear speculations, or personally speculate about it.

With Dyson’s original model, theorists have built various versions on what they believe a Dyson Sphere might look like, or at least what is most probable. One is the Dyson Swarm–made from a collection of solar collector satellites that would independently orbit a star and absorb its energy, redirecting it to habitable space in need of energy. In a future where Earth needed to build a Dyson Swarm, Dr. Stuart Armstrong proposed a plan in which humans would extract Mercury of all its raw materials with the help of robots, and use these resources to build solar energy collectors that would swarm the Sun in all different orbits like a compact cluster. The solar collectors would additionally be equipped with thrusters to maintain stability with the star and hold their distance.

The Dyson Bubble was a similar design in which hypothetical satellites called statites would counteract a star’s forces of gravity with radiation pressure. They would be equipped with solar sails and sit anywhere, completely stationary from other statites and free and flexible with regards to a star. This design is better than the Dyson Swarm because it doesn’t need to worry about gravitational forces from its star unlike models such as the Dyson Swarm (which have to use thrusters, as stated above). 

People have also looked into Dyson Shells, which are super similar to Dyson Spheres in which Earth’s entire Solar System would need to be obliterated and used for parts in constructing the shell. Its radius would span over 1 astronomical unit (AU), or around the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The concept is essentially a giant shell that surrounds a star. Inhabitants, such as humans in the future, would live on the outer surfaces of the shell but would feel immense heat from the Sun. Additionally, the lack of gravity would cause everything to collapse on itself.

But we can’t forget about Dyson Rings, which are the building blocks to creating any sort of Dyson Sphere design. In a Dyson Ring, solar energy collectors utilize a star’s orbit to create a single-file line of energy-harvesters (imagine a cartoon image of Saturn with a single ring, the center body being a star). More rings could eventually be added, forming a spherical formation with millions of these spacecraft.  

So how does Earth increase its level on the Kardashev Scale? While we're currently far off from even being a Type I civilization, building a contraption in space to harvest energy from the Sun might not be completely out of a timeline (ranging 100-200 years). The extent to which a Dyson Sphere-type model is put into action heavily relies on the progress of human space exploration, as well as new advancements to technology on Earth.