Imagine a distant future when humans reach beyond our pale blue dot, forge cities on planets thousands of light-years away, and maintain a galactic web of trade and transport. What would it take for our civilization to make that leap? There are many things to consider— how would we communicate? What might a galactic government look like? And one of the most fundamental of all: where would we get enough energy to power that civilization— its industry, its terraforming operations, and its starships?
The Kardashev Scale
An astronomer named Nikolai Kardashev proposed a scale to quantify an evolving civilization’s increasing energy needs. This is called the Kardashev scale. We humans are just on stage 1 of the Kardashev- which means that we have not yet harnessed the full energy of our own earth !!! The second stage is when we harness all the energy of the entire solar system- from the Storms of Jupiter to the mountains of mars- even the entire solar energy of our sun needs to be harnessed! So, it is incredibly difficult to think of an energy source for a stage 3 civilisations- expansion on a galactic scale would require about 100 billion times more energy than the full 385 Yotta joules our sun releases every second. Barring a breakthrough in exotic physics, there’s only one energy source that could suffice: a supermassive black hole.
Dyson Sphere
The key to harnessing this power may lie in a structure devised by physicist Freeman Dyson, known as the Dyson sphere. In the 1960s, Dyson proposed that an advanced planetary civilization could engineer an artificial sphere around their main star, capturing all of its radiated energy to satisfy their needs. A similar, though the vastly more complicated design, could theoretically be applied to black holes.
Since black holes need to be fed continuously, a Dyson Sphere won't work, because the sphere would fully cover it- and would inevitably collapse n the immense gravity Even if we did, the plasma jets that shoot from the poles of many supermassive black holes would blow any structure in their way to smithereens. So instead, we might design a sort of Dyson ring, made of massive, remotely controlled collectors.How the Dyson Ring will look like
What we will need
We would likely need several Earths worth of highly reflective material like hematite to construct the full system— plus a few more dismantled planets to make a legion of construction robots. Once built, the Dyson ring would be a technological masterpiece, powering a civilization spread across every arm of a galaxy. This all may seem like wild speculation. But even now, in our current energy crisis, we’re confronted by the limited resources of our planet. New ways of sustainable energy production will always be needed, especially as humanity works towards the survival and technological progress of our species. Perhaps there’s already a civilization out there that has conquered these astronomical giants. We may even be able to tell by seeing the light from their black hole periodically dim as pieces of the Dyson ring pass between us and them. Or maybe these superstructures are fated to remain in the realm of theory. Only time— and our scientific ingenuity— will tell.
Advanced technologies will be needed
Conclusion
The curiosity and the need for answers is the nature of humanity. Humanity will always find a way to survive and progress. It would never stop till it as reached te eight or beyond Galactic civilization is a tremendous step, if humanity achieves it we could have, by that time be living and thriving with many other beings. We don’t know, there might be supergiant god-like species who ave already conquered the galaxy and might capture and exhaust the resources of our galaxy. We don’t know We ave just begin “the beginning of the new era of the conquer of space”
By Dhravya Shah and Sushant Pulipati
Comments
Also hindsight it also made me to think how little one knows about whatever is achieved. How much more to learn, it is now knowledge to gain is no more ocean it is like universe or beyond. Am not sure if anyone can learn everything lying around us, but keep the childlike inquisitiveness am sure humans can achieve much more than what we achieved. Now it is no more Newton's laws but there is more for every young and old person to think and get amused and derive something.