Nationalgeographic.co.id—From horse-drawn carriage ships, ships, planes, to creating rockets. That’s it species we humans have come a long way in developing technology and science. Technology, together with science, produces fuel that initially uses natural energy such as being pulled by animals, until finally developing towards natural sources energy which is more renewable and cleaner.
Now, we are about to face an unavoidable moment: our own destruction. All because of human activities themselves that cause climate change and create order on Earth. So, another solution to save us in the future is to escape from Earth.
A paper precast in arXiv March 2022 argued that humans might become a real interplanetary species within 200 years. Researchers’ understanding of human capabilities stems from the theory of civilizations that have overcome their obstacles.
This understanding of the theory of civilization dates back to 1964 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. He proposed a measurement scheme that was later modified by US astronomer Carl Sagan to estimate the technological capabilities of intelligent species.
It all comes down to energy and how much of that energy source a species can use for its own purposes.
Civilizations are made by type. Type I, can use all the energy available on the planet of origin of the species, including energy sources in the soil such as fossil fuels and materials that can be used for nuclear fission. It also has to rely on the energy that falls to the planet from its parent star.
Then a type II civilization consumes 10 times the amount of energy and is able to exploit the energy yield of a single star. Until finally civilization can enter type III when it can go further, and use up most of the energy in the entire galaxy.
According to the researchers, when we put humans together, we are well below the Type I threshold. However, our energy consumption is growing every year, and more and more people are using more power per capita.
The power that humans exploit has a price, namely threats to the biosphere and the release of carbon, and pollutants. As well as the risks posed by the ability to use powerful means of energy delivery for destructive purposes, such as nuclear bombs.
“The earth is a small dot surrounded by darkness,” he said Jonathan Jianglead author of the study from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Live Science. “Our current understanding of physics tells us that we are stuck in this small rock (obstacle) with limited resources.”
The problem is, before leaving planet Earth forever, humans must overcome the obstacles to the progress of their civilization. We must drastically increase the use of nuclear and renewable energy, and at the same time protect these sources of energy from being used for evil purposes that actually destroy humanity.
This increase in energy consumption is dangerous, which may explain why until now scientists have not been able to find an advanced alien civilization. If Earth weren’t so special, and the development of life and intelligence wasn’t so unique, the galaxy should be teeming with intelligent creatures.
It could be, somewhere or some place there is actually a civilization that has reached Type III and is starting to explore the galaxy in earnest. That is, if humans were to become an intelligent species, there should be someone (or something) out there willing to meet us.
So far we only know that we are alone on this planet of the universe. It seems that life, especially the intelligent one, seems to be very rare. So, maybe some series of processes have removed the stage of life before they entered a high level of civilization. This circuit is called a ‘great filter’ or great filter.
Jiang said, although we have developed an understanding of energy, capable of destroying our own species, we have not yet solved the riddle of the path to entering the first type of civilization. “We are our own great filter,” he said.
He continued, the trick so that we can help achieve the progress of human civilization is to increase and focus energy on the support of life, including one planet. In fact, Jiang added, if necessary a solar system.
This opinion he and his team discovered by mapping out the clear consequences for his sustainable use of fossil fuels. All of that they follow from whatever the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change says, and if countries comply.
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In short, we are actually heading to the stage civilization forward to explore the planets. Except, we’re doing too much damage to Earth’s biosphere and filtering progress toward a Type I civilization.
The study also assumes a 2.5 percent annual growth in the use of renewable and nuclear energy. They found that in the next 20 to 30 years, these forms of energy use will slowly replace fossil fuels.
Nuclear and renewable energy sources have the potential to continue to grow in output without burdening the biosphere. If we continue at our current level of consumption, we will reach Type I status in 2371, according to the researchers.
But there are some things missing in this research, Jiang admits. For example, some things are uncertain in 100 years, and how we deal with nuclear waste, and increasing the ability to use energy will not lead to disaster.
He believes, if we maintain this pace, we can set the stage for our civilization so that it has the potential to protect our species for generations to come. The paper is entitled Avoiding the Great Filter: Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization.
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