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How powerful could a civilization get? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Daniel, how's our podcast doing these days? Are you number
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: one in any territories right now? Unfortunately we are only
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: number three in natural science in the US, behind some
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: like paranormal and bigfoot podcasts. Maybe we should do those
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: topics then we can be number one. Daniel and Jorge
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: explained Bigfoot. How are those considered natural science? Doesn't seem
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: very natural to me. I don't know, but the folks
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: in the UK actually have us as number one in
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: natural science, ahead of the big Foot podcast. So shout
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: out to the UK science listeners. Maybe they don't have
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: sasquatch in the UK, or maybe they call it something
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: different like lockness or be for a guy. I don't know,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: but it makes me hopeful that will be number one
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in natural science in other places. Are you thinking globally
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: or are you thinking like solar system? Why? Yeah, let's
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: go into planetary I want to become the top podcast
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of Martian colonists. Why stop there? Why not go all
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the way to Jupiter or Uranus? I mean Uranus? Sure?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I want to also be number one podcast among aliens
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: eavesdropping on human technology? Do you think we have alien fans?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I just wonder if that's going to change who buys
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: ads for the show? What kind of products do you
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: think they would be trying to sell to humans? I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: don't know, but thanks to cryptocurrency and Venmo, they can
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: actually send their funds interplanetary lee to us on Earth.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: You think they have Venmo and other galaxies or other planets? Also,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: how do they do the exchange tree? Don't you need
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: like a central bank or something. We'll figure that out
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: when we build our Daniel and Jorge Galactic Empire, which
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: will include cryptocurrency. I don't know, Man, sounds kind of risky. Well,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: if we're not going to do crypto zoology, we gotta
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: do crypto something, crypto economics, exo crypto economics, exo crypto
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: podcast comics. I'll be the first person with a PhD
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: in that field. Hi am Jorhammer, cartoonists and the creator
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I own
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: zero cryptocurrency. Oh how do you know? I mean, isn't
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: it all virtual? Couldn't you virtually own it too? I
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: mean I checked my pockets and I didn't find any.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So that's what I mean you wouldn't find it in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: your pockets, I mean my digital pockets. Man. No, I'm
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: not invested in cryptocurrency, have not bought any cryptocurrency. I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: don't think that anything I own owns any cryptocurrency. To
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the best of my knowledge, as my lawyer's advised me
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to say, I am not in the crypto universe. It
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: might be hard to tell the these days. I wonder
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: like if some mutual fund you buy, buy some other
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: fund that buys another fund that maybe has a little
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: bit of crypto in it. We probably all have a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: little bit of crypto in us. Humans are pretty cryptic,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I guess. But welcome their podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: do you know a production of our heart Radio in
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: which we attempt to do our best to decrypt the
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: universe and explain all of its mysteries to you. We
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: want to unscramble the craziness that is our cosmos and
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: explain to you how it can be understood in terms
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of a set of basic physical laws. It seems like
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: so far everything out there can be made sense of.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: It's possible to assemble simple mathematical stories that describe how
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: balls bounce against each other. How galaxies form, and maybe
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: even what's inside black holes or the fundamental underpinnings of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: alien economics. It's right because it is a pretty rich
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: universe full of amazing and incredible treasures that you can
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: invest in in order to grow your mind, I guess,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: And so that's what we do here. We like to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: talk about it so we can have a pretty good
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: exchange with all of you about it. All we ask
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: for is your time and a slice of your brain
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: to sit with us and enjoy the crazy mysteries of
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the universe as we try to unravel them. While we
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: are here on this tiny rock, we are able to
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: cast our minds across the cosmos and wonder what's going
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: on out there in other solar systems. Are there aliens
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: looking up at their night skies wondering what we are
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: thinking about and whether we would be interested in buying
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: their n f T s. Yeah, because it's a pretty
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: big universe, and as they said in the movie Contact,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: it would be kind of a shame if we were
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the only living Sentien beings in it. It would be
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty amazing thing to be the only ones in
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: this vast universe that we have some kind of intelligence
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: or podcasts. It would be pretty amazing to be alone,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and it would be pretty amazing to not be alone. Either.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Answer to this famous question is mind blowing. Does it
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: depend you think on whether you're an extrovert species or
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: an introvert species. I think it's nice to know that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: they're out there. If you're an introvert species, you might
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: not want to give them a call, but you still
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: want to know that they exist. You know, I think
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: everybody is probably curious about the universe, but there's an
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: insumption there. Right we're extrapolating our experience to the experience
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of aliens. We're hoping that the is other intelligence out
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: there in the universe because we know that we are
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: capable of joy and love and beauty, and we hope
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: that aliens out there are also having a good time.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: We hope that they aren't floating in their slime pits
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and just totally suffering. Would that makes you, I guess,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: more of an ex overt because you like exceplanetary life.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I am more of an ex overt than an extrovert,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: that's true. I'm more interested in talking to aliens than
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: humans sometimes and learning from them. I guess because if
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: there are aliens out there, there's a lot that we
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: can learn from them, right, there's a lot that we
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: can learn about how to travel through stars, or even
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: just how to make it past our point intilisation to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: greater things, or just how to be alive in this universe.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: When you travel, even just here on Earth and experience
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: different human cultures, you learn so much about the basic
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: questions they ask about life, the approach they take. It
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: makes you realize how much of your life and the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: way you think is kind of arbitrary and cultural. It
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: opens your minds, it shows you the box that you
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: have been thinking in, and so talking to aliens would
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: be the ultimate version of that. Experience could help us
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: understand our context in ways we can't even imagine today,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and of course, perhaps help us crack some of the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: long standing physics problems we're being in our heads against.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I feel like maybe we could do that on our own, Daniel,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: what do humans need help? Can we figure it all
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: out eventually on our own? It's certainly possible that we
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: could figure it all out eventually, But we might not
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: be the smartest species out there, right, I think humans
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: are pretty clever, But it's possible we have a limitation
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: to our fundamental neural capacity that makes it impossible for
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: us to grasp the mathematics that underlie the universe. Is
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: also the possibility of false starts. You know, human science
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: is fairly diverse, but it also has collapsed along a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: few pathways, choices we made early on, being influenced by
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: geniuses who came along. It's just interesting to think about
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: other paths and intelligent species might have taken that might
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: be more or less fruitful in terms of understanding the universe.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I wonder how we would react if one of your
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: students said that to you, like, Hey, Dr Whiteson, I
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: don't think I'm the smartest person in the class. I
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: just don't have the neural processes for it. Can I
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: copy that person next to me for our test? You
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: would have to say yes, Daniel. I think the ultimate
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: exam for an intelligent species is working together to figure
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: out the mystery of the universe. So we're all getting
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: graded on a group project. That's how I see it. Well,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it is an interesting topic to think about whether aliens
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: exist out there, And just to be clear, Daniel, nobody
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: has seen or talked to any aliens as far as
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: physicists know. Right, as far as this physicists, no, we
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: have no confirmed communications with aliens. Absolutely, that's a different
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: podcast in the natural sciences. Maybe the Luckness Monster is
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: actually an alien come to Earth to talk to its
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: long lost brother Bigfoot. I think you just found our
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: new gold mine here, fun fan fiction about human fiction cryptozoology.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But instead of thinking about what other weird kinds of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: life might exist in the lakes of Scotland or the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: deep forests of Alaska, we like to think about what
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: kind of life might exists on other planets and whether
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: it would be possible to communicate with them. If we're
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: going to hear messages from distant civilizations on the other
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: side of the galaxy, will of course need to receive
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: those messages. They'll need to be capable of sending us
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: those messages, so we have to think a little bit
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: about what their civilizations might be capable of. Yeah, and
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: all those this might seem like baseless extrapolation or speculation,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: it is something that physicists have been engaging for a while,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: have polished papers on these ideas about aliens and what
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: aliens could look like, and even Carl saying I was
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: sort of famous for chiming in a lot about aliens.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: You say baseless extrapolation like it's a bad thing. I
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: don't get it usually when maybe in physics the bar
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: is lower. Is that what you're saying? Well, you know,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: in physics were often tackling problems that are basically impossible.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: We don't know how to get started, and so what
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: we usually do is we begin with the simplest, dumbest thing,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: which often involves baseless extrapolation, Like we don't know how
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: to tackle this, Let's just assume a spherical cow and
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: start from there. And we're going to talk about alien civilizations.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: The only example we have is our own, and so
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: we have to begin at least by making some assumptions
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: about alien civilizations and their similarity to civilization on Earth,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: knowing all the time, keeping in the back of our
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: heads that we are making these assumptions and that maybe
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: one day we'll figure out how to relax them or
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: break them or get out of that box. And then
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I guess the point would be that once we meet aliens,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: you can be like, Hi, I told you so, or WHOA,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I was totally wrong? Is that the whole point of it? Yeah,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: if you think this through and you come to some conclusions,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and then you meet aliens and discover they're totally different
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: from what you expected. It helps you think through what
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you might have misunderstood, which aspect of your assumptions, which
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: step in your line of thinking might have gone wrong.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: How much of your time did you waste? Well, it's
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that or just don't think about it. You know that's right.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: It's do physics or just don't think about it. Those
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: are the two only two options. Do physics or do nothing? Right,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, is there anything else on the menu that's right? Well,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: what else would there be in life to do? No?
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: But when you are tackling really big, hard questions about
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the nature of the universe and alien civilizations, you don't
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: often have first principles to start from, so you just
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: sort of explore the space using some assumptions to get
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: yourself oriented. Yeah, so this is something physicists have been
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: thinking about, and in fact, there's an interesting framework to
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: think about it. And the question here is what would
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: an alien civilization look like? Can we extrapolate from human civilization?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: So to be on the podcast, we'll be tackling how
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: powerful can a civilization get? Now? Daniel is as powerful
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: as in like awesome, or powerful as in like will
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: come and kill us? Powerful as in what is there
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in number one podcast? In the natural sciences in certain
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: countries clearly a leading indicator of cultural value and progress, right,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and handsomeness as well. Don't forget there's a clear correlation
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: if you look at a certain data set. There's lots
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: of ways to think about the power of a civilization.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But in a very practical sense, if we are going
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: to discover an alien civilization without going there, they need
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: to be pretty powerful because we have to receive their signals,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: right if they are far far away around another star
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: for us to hear their messages, their messages have to
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: arrive on Earth, which means they need a certain power
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: in their broadcast. And so we can think about, like, fundamentally,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: what is the energy available to those civilizations? Would they
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: even have enough energy to beam us a message from
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the other side of the galaxy? You mean sort of
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: like what's their footprint, Like what's their energy footprint? I
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: physicist tends to think about things as like simple black boxes, right,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: like energy in, energy out. But if physicist things about nutrition,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: for example, it's just like calories in calories burned, right,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: physicists model humans as like simple bomb calorimeters, and so
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: here we're modeling like the entire complexity of an alien
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: civilization in terms of like how much energy to have
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: access to and how much energy can they afford to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: put it to their signal? I see. So today we're
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: serve asking like how much energy and alien civilization might
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: be able to consume I guess so spend or hardness
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: or channel into one signal exactly. It's a way of
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: thinking through our possible future for our civilization. What does
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that hold? What technology might we develop in the future
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that gives us access to stars or many stars or
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: many universes. And so physicists have come up with or
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: at least some physicists have come up with a scale
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: to measure how much energy and alien civilization might be
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: able to tap into around them in where they live.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: It's called the kar dash Off scale. It's not related
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to the Kardashian Yeah. The scale is how many Kardashians
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: do you have on your social media? And so we've
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: currently maxed that out. We're leading the galaxy. Yeah, you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I think one is maybe too many on that scale.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: But it's a kardas chef kardash If how do you
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: pronounce it? I've heard it pronounced kardas chef. And it's
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: a popular trope inside it's fiction also because it's a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: fun way of thinking about very powerful alien civilizations, and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: so it crops up everywhere. And a bunch of listeners
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: wrote in and asked us to talk about the Cardassip scale.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And are you sure they weren't asking us to talk
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: to a Kardashian on the podcast because that would probably
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: put put us in the number one spot. I reached
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: out to all of them. None of them have responded,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: all right, So then let's talk about this Cardaship scale
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: here on today's episode. And so, as usual, we were
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: wondering how many people out there had heard of this
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: scale and how it measures an alien civilizations possible energy use.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: So thank you very much to everybody out there who
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: participates in these questions and answers. It's really fun for
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: us to hear what people are thinking. If you'd like
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to participate for future episodes of the podcast, please don't
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: be shy right to us two questions at Daniel and
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. So think about it for a second,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: what do you think a Cardiship scale is. Here's what
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: people have to say. I'm pretty sure I've heard of
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the Cardassi of scale, but I am blanking on what
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: it is. Something in the back of my mind is
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: saying it's something about the size of stars or something
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: like that. I have no idea. I don't know, no
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: have any idea Kardashi of scale. No, I don't know
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: what the kardashi of scale is. But if I had
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to take a kiss, I would say it is some
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: sort of high energy scale at which quantum effects become important,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like in a black hole or something because of the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: or the very high energy density and also quantum property
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: has become important. All right, maybe we need a we
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: have no idea scale here, because everyone seemed to max
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: it out on the idol no scale. There really was
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: no recognition. I'm sort of amazed. It's given the number
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: of listeners who asked us to talk about this. The
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: listeners a happy example here had never heard of it. Well,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: that's what we're here for, to talk about the Kardashians
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and obscue or alien scales that measure their energy. I
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: wonder what the alien Kardashians are like, Oh my gosh,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I kind of hope they don't have Kardashians. Maybe the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Kardashian scale is how much your civilization has jumped the shark. Well,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: we have jumped the shark and the Bigfoot and the
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Lockness monsters. So I think we're in big trouble. We're
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: due for cancelation any moment, the galactic Netflix is going
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: to pull our budget. Huh right, yeah, no, I want
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to see what happens in season five thousand of Humanity.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Which season are we on? Now? I haven't been binging Humans.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not cut up. Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's like, oh,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you gotta watch this, you gotta see these kids. But
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: who has the time? You know? Spoiler alert, a lot
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of people die. Sounds like a depressing show. Well, let's
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: jump into Daniel. What is the Cardaship scale? So the
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Cardassia scale was suggested by a physicist Cardassian, of course,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that tries to imagine how civilizations will grow, specifically in
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: their energy use, in order to understand how much energy
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: they might have available to pump into signals to beam
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to Earth so that we can discus robbed them. The
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: original Cardaship scale has a few stages. But in the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: meantime people have built on this and expanded on it
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and taken in all sorts of new directions. So sort
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: of fun framework for understanding how a civilization might grow
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: to tap into the natural energy available to us in
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the universe. I see. Is it more like a scale
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: that measures how much energy a civilization uses or just
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: kind of keeps tab of where they would get this energy.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: It's both. It's an accounting of how much energy is
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: available to a civilization, but of course there aren't infinite
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: arbitrary energy sources in the universe, and so it imagines
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: how they might find those sources of energy. And it's
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: broken into three categories. One where you think about all
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the energy available on a planet, another way you think
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: about all the energy available in the solar system, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: then a third where you think about all of the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: energy available in the galaxy. I see, So like a
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: stage one civilization is one that only has the energy
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: of a planet available to them, or alternatively, you assume
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that they have access to all the energy that a
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: planet they can have. Yes, precisely, All right, well, let's
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: get into each of these stages and see where humans
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: are and where aliens might be at But first let's
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, welcome back to our
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: podcast Baseless Speculation with Daniel and Jorge about Aliens The
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: first steps in understanding the universe with Daniel and Jorge.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I thought the first step was always observation. Daniel insights, well,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: we've been trying to observe aliens, but we have zero data,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and so that's one thing we haven't tried to understand.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I see, step one is observed. Step two a is
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: if you don't observe anything, start making stuff up. Is
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that what you're saying? Yeah, well, also if you don't
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: observe anything, try to understand why you didn't see something.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: One thing that motivated Cardasi's paper was the famous Fermi paradox,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the idea that the galaxy is quite old, certainly old
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: enough for alien civilizations to have developed and beamed US signals,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and yet we haven't heard from any of them. So
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Cardassian was motivated to think about, like, well, how would
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: they send us messages, would they actually have enough energy,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and how would they do it? So it's a way
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of thinking about also why we haven't heard from aliens.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Nice see, it's kind of like we they haven't come visited.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Why would that be? And we can't see them why
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: would that be? And if you think about different scenarios,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: maybe you can come up with a way that you
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: could see them exactly. And it might make the problem
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: harder because maybe you discover, oh, it's quite trivial for
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: aliens to have enough energy to beamas messages, and or
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: maybe you discover that in order for aliens to send
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: us messages from across the galaxy, they would have to
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: harness all the power of the entire galaxy. And that
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: might explain why we can't see Kardashians from other worlds,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: which is a bad thing. No value judgements here, man,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: this is just science. Well apparently this idea of how
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: much energy and alien species might be consuming or have
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: avail to them is all measured on something called the
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Kardashi of scale, which, as you said, has three stages.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: So let's step through these stages. What's stage number one?
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And is that something we're at or are we pass
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: stage one? Where are we in this stage system? So?
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Stage number one is a civilization that uses all of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the energy available on its planet, meaning all of the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: solar energy for example, that hits the surface of the Earth.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: We are not even at stage one. I mean we
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: are capturing some fraction of the solar energy, for example,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and digging up fossil fuels that have effectively stored solar
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: energy from the past. But on the Earth, what's available
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: to us is something like ten to the seventeen watts.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Watts is a unit of power, so it's energy per second.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Is that the kind of watt? It's like, if you
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: had a solar panel the size of the Earth, that's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: how much energy we would be getting from the sun.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: If yes, if you can cover the entire Earth with
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: solar panels, so you built like a solar panel that
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: completely made the Earth in shadow, that's how much energy
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: you could theoretically capture, or that's how much energy is
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: falling onto those solar pan Solar panels, of course not efficient,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: but that's sort of like how much energy you have
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: access to m M And that's interesting how you said that. Basically,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: like fossil fuels, even what we have here, maybe even
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: wind energy, it all comes from the Sun eventually, right,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: All that energy originally does come from the sun. Yeah,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: wind also comes from the sun because it involves heating
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: of pockets of air by the Sun, so all of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: that originally does come from the Sun. There are, of course,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: other sources of energy we could tap into on Earth
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: that are not directly from our Sun. Like when you
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: do fission, you're breaking apart uranium. That uranium was formed
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: in some other process, maybe the supernova or collisions of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: neutron stars, well before our solar system was even birth.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: So you're tapping into energy sources that have been stored
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: there for a long time. But you're saying all energy
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: solar energy. So when I'm at the gas station actually
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: pouring solar energy into my car, yeah, well, gas is
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: sort of like a solar battery. The idea of the
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Cardaschef scale is not to argue that the maximum energy
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: you could get on Earth is just to cover it
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: with solar panels. It's just a way to sort of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: set a level to fix the standard. There's actually more
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: energy available than that. If you could like take the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: components of the Earth and you fission and fusion, you
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: could release even more energy than the sort of stage
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: one cardassief standard. But it's just sort of like how
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to define a threshold, all right, So then is the
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: threshold defined by the solar energy we get from the Sun,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: or like all the energy in all of the uranium
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and heavy atoms, and maybe even the water, because if
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: you can figure out fusion, you could also fuse water
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to make energy. Is that how you define how much
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: energy is available on planet Earth? No, it's just the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: amount of solar energy that falls on planet Earth defines
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the Cardassie of scale, so you can im principle exceed
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: it without leaving your planet. Right. For example, you could
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: achieve this by doing matter antimatter annihilation, right, Like two
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: kilograms of matter antimatter annihilation every second would achieve kardashef
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Stage one energy levels even without doing any solar power.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: But I wonder if maybe in his scale he was
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: more thinking about like long term sustainable energy sources, right, Like,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: maybe we can figure out fission and fusion, but eventually
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to run out of these fuel elements in
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: on a single planet. But the Sun is going to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: be burning for billions of years. That's true, although a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: lot of these sources would last a really long time.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: If for example, we could do fusion, you know, we'd
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: need like three ms of hydrogen fused per second to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: reach Kardashiev stage one. That sounds like a lot, but
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of hydrogen out there on the planet.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You know, like a cubic kilometer of water has like
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a hundred billion kilograms of hydrogen. So a cubic kilometer
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: of water is like hundreds of years of energy at
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the kardashi of stage one. And there's a lot of
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: cubic kilometers of water out there, So even if you
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: were ignoring solar power, you could achieve this level and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: do it for a long long time even without solar power.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like you're trying to convince me that this
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Cardashians scale is not really valid, are so I guess
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: what are you saying like or what is the scale
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: supposed to be measuring? Then the scale is just to
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: set a standard to say what could you achieve using
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the energy of a planet. Obviously, how much energy you
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: could actually extract from a planet over billions of years
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: depends on what's in that planet, for example, how big
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: is that planet, how much mass is there. But this
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: is just like to set a standard in the end.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Of course it's arbitrary, but it's also a useful measure.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: It's an approximate value just to sort of guide your thinking.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And you know, one thing to realize is that we
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: are far from that threshold here on Earth. If the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: standard is two times ten of the seventeen watts, we're
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: about a factor of ten thousand below that. Human civilization
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: uses like ten to the thirteen watts, so we're well
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: below a stage one civilization. Okay, So these stages are
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: defined by wattage. So a stage one civilization is one
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that uses approximately ten to the seventeen watts of energy.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Is that kind of how the scale works. It's like,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: if you're a sialization and you're using about ten to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the seventeen wats of energy, then we'll categorize you as
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: a stage one and usually that made that will probably
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: mean you're an a range of like still stuck in
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: your planet exactly, that's what you're capable of, even if
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: you're stuck on your planet, right, your cable is something
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of that order. Maybe you figured out matter and to
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: matter annihilation, maybe you figured out fusion. Maybe you've covered
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: your planet and solar panels. Maybe you've build space based
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: solar panels that then beam the energy down to Earth.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: But if you're a very advancedabilization, but you're still on
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: your planet. That's sort of the order of magnitude of
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: energy that you have available to you. All right, So
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: then where are we You said we're below that maximum usage. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: we're about a factor of ten thousand below officially being
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: stage one crowned by the Galactic Empire as a baby civilization,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: age one, Carl Stagan estimated they were like a type
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: zero point seven civilization on the carda chef scale, you like,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: try to make it continuous instead of just having like
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: one to three. And the estimates that were around zero
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: point seven. And it's kind of like a logarithmic scale, right,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: like difference between point seven and point it is. It's
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: partly like an order of magnitude or something. Yeah, he
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: was using a logarithmic extrapolation. And the reason is that
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: we tend to increase the consumption of energy bio civilization
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: fairly exponentially. Like in the last decade, energy use has
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: gone up by two point three percent every year. Every year,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that's a larger increase because it's two of a bigger number,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And so people estimate that if we increase our energy
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: use every year by three percent, then in a hundred
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and fifty or two hundred years, we would be at
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: type one civilization. I wonder if this scale also depends
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: on how many people there are, or how many individuals
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of a certain species there are. Like you know, if
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: one person was using ten to the seventeen, watch must
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: be a super duper advanced civilization, right with you know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: one person being a control all this energy. But as
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you know, there's like a trillion or trillion trillion people
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: then and each person is using a little bit of energy,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: then maybe it's not that impressive a thing. Maybe alien
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Kardashians are dominating the alien energy market. It's a good
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: question how they use is their energy? And I think
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: for a Kardashiv, the goal was to think about what
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: fraction of their energy they might devote to sending a
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: signal to outer space. If they have access to tend
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: to the seventeen watts of energy, maybe they would devote
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: one percent of it to pumping messages to the stars
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: or point oh one percent of it. But it just
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: sort of gives you a scale for what they have
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: access to. M all right, let's talk about what they
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: might use all this energy for. But I guess let's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: step through the the rest of these stages. So if
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: we're like almost up stage one civilization, what would be
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a stage to a civilization. Stage two would be too
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: unshackle yourself from your planet and then take advantage of
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: all the energy put out by your star. Now here
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: we are on Earth. Even if we gobbled up all
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of the photons that come to the Earth from the Sun,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that's a tiny fraction of the Sun's energy. The Sun
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: is also shooting out photons that don't hit the Earth,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of course, and all sorts of directions, and so the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: idea is capture all of the energy of your star,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: not just the fraction that falls on your planet. So
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: stage two is like we've left the Earth and we're
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: living in space. Basically, you don't even have to leave
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the Earth, and you don't have to live in space necessarily,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: but you have to have somehow have the technology to
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: harness the energy of that star, which probably means building
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: some mega structure, like a bunch of solar panels that
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: envelope your star to gather all of that energy. Right,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: But that would be a pretty big construction project. I mean,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: you would need people living out there just to build
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: something so big or at least have the ability to like,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: you know, move around space pretty easily, which is a
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: lot more than what we can do now. We definitely
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: are nowhere close to doing that, and you probably would
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: need people out there, but you also might be able
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: to automate a lot of it. You could have robots,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: for example, that build more robots and then build this
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: massive structure. It's hard to get your mind around the
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: sort of the size of this thing. This would be
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing anybody ever built. If you make it
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: really close to the Sun, it can be smaller, but
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: then it's subject to a lot of solar radiation. If
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: you make it further away from the Sun, then it's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: got to be like ridiculously massive. Like for example, if
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: you build this thing at one a U, so you
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: have like now a sphere whose radius is the radius
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: of the Earth's orbit, then the inside of this thing
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: is going to be five hundred and fifty million times
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the surface area of the Earth. So imagine a construction
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: project that rebuilds the service that area of the Earth
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty million times. That's definitely not going
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: to be on budget or on schedule, right, Although the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: positive thing is that it will always be sunny inside
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: of that sphere, right, just like here in southern California, yeah,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: or Philadelphia. But I mean this is sort of like
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: one way that you could harness the power of the Sun,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: which is to build a giant solar panel that basically
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: like envelops the Sun so you can capture all of
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: its energy. And what does that take us up to
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: in terms of watta? So Stage one, remember was ten
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to the seventeen watts. Stage two using all the energy
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: available from the Sun is like four times ten to
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: the twenty six watts. So that's like a billion times
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: or two billion times more energy than Stage one. Really
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: only a billion times to go from the Earth to
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the Sun. Only a billion times more energy. Wow, you
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: don't seem impressed. Well, as in the Earth super tiny
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: compared to the Sun. The Earth is certainly super tiny
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: compared to the Sun. But the sort of cross sectional
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: area of the Earth, which is the fraction of the
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Sun's energy that it captures, is approximately one billion of
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the surface area of a sphere whose radius is the
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: orbit of the Earth. That's why if you built the
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Dicen sphere, it had to be like many hundreds of
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: millions of times the surface area of the Earth to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: cover the inside of that sphere. So a fact of
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a billion is about right. But again, this is just
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: solar energy. Like, we could probably maybe get to that
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: level of wattage if we figure a fusion or fission
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: more efficiently right here on Earth. It's conceptionally possible to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: achieve a stage to civilization to get that same level
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of energy without building the dicensphere, developing some other way
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: to extract energy from within the Earth, you know, antimatter
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: or fusion or something else. Crazy. Again, this is just
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: sort of like a scale. The Sun is the cheapest,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: most abundant, easiest to identify source of energy in the
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: solar system, So what could you do if you could
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: capture all of the energy that it produces? Right? All right, Well,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: let's step through quickly. What are some of these other stages?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: If you use all the energy in the Sun, where
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: do you go from there? All the energy in the galaxy? Yes,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: exactly where else could you go except from our star
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: to all the other stars? So Kardashian's stage three says,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: use all the energy in the galaxy, which basically is
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: like all the energy in each individual star, and that
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: takes you up another eleven orders of magnitude. Another factor
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: of a hundred billion to four times tend to the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: thirty seven watts. Member Stage one, which we're not even
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: at is tend to the seventeen watts. So now we're
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: talking about twenty orders of magnitude more energy than the
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Stage one. Like somehow, if you have solar panels around
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: every star in the galaxy, then you could harness all
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: of the light that is coming out of a particular galaxy.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Right in principle, if you didn't think building a dicen
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: sphere was a big enough construction project, you could build
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: one around every single star in the galaxy. I can't
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: even say it without laughing at such a ridiculous idea.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: But in principle, if you develop the machines to build
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: more machines to complete your dicensphere project, they could just
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: go off to the rest of the galaxy and keep working.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe your robots are like a virus. Once they start
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: building dicen spheres, they just don't stop. That sounds like
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: a negative thing to snuff out the whole galaxy basically, right, Yeah,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: it depends on what you do with that, you know,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: if the robots developed these dicen spears and then channel
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the energy to you for you to use for good
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: for building your civilization and feeding your people, etcetera. Awesome.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: If they just harness the energy the galaxy and snuff
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: it out, then yeah, the galaxy is going to go dark, right,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: All the stars would be burning inside these dice in spheres.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: There'll be no more light being released for like astronomy
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and star gazing and romantic dinners. Well, you can imagine
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: maybe an alien civilization doing this, and we haven't meagined
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: then apparently, and we I think we've talked about this
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: also in our podcast about this possibility, but maybe let's
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about why this is kind of
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: relevant right to our question of aliens and do they
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: exist and could we see them out there? Because the
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: ideas and not just that there's an alien realization using
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: all this energy, but maybe they're using it in a
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: way that would allow us to communicate with them or
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: at least see them, right exactly, having aliens out there
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: in the universe is not enough for us to discover them.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: We need to get signals from them and at least
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: up till now we've relied on messages from electromagnetic radiation.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: That's what we're looking for. You know, the search for
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: extraterrestrial intelligence is scanning the sky for messages essentially in
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the radio waves, and to produce those radio waves takes energy.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: When you're a radio station is pumping out music that
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: you like over the airwaves, they're doing so by running
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: an antenna, by sending electricity up and down that antenna,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: by wiggling those electrons so that they radiate the photons
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that you pick up. You know how some radio stations
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: are very powerful and other radio stations you can't really
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: pick up in some areas. That's because some have more
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: powerful broadcast antennas because they spend more money to build
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: more antennas and use more energy. So in order to
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: be heard a further distance, you need more energy. Well,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe I don't understand the scenario that you're
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: imagining here. Are you imagining like there's an alien civilization
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: using all this energy, maybe all the energy in a
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: galaxy and somehow we can pick up on that, or
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: is this scenario more specific where you're imagining like, all right,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: if there are aliens broadcasting out like hey we're here, signal.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: How much energy would they have available to put into
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: that so that we could hope to see it? I
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: think Cardiship is imagining the second one, that if aliens
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: are intentionally sending out messages in the cosmos, how powerful
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: could they make those messages? And what kind of civilizations
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: could support ridiculously powerful messages that we could even hear
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: from across the galaxy or from other galaxies. I mean,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: a civilization that harnessed the entire energy of their galaxy
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: could do incredible things, probably including sending very powerful messages
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: across the millions of light years between galaxies. But also,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like galactic engineering projects, and you have that
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: much energy available, you can almost do anything, right. I
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: guess that's a whole separate question is like, would they
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: use some of that energy to send out a signal
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: to other people saying, hey, come check out our awesome engineering. Yeah,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, would we write we're currently using a very
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: very tiny fraction of our energy budget to even listen
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: to messages from outer space. We're not even really sending
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: very many, at least not intentionally. You know, as you
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: said before, our use of energy makes us visible from
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: other planets, but not from very far away, because those
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: messages are not broadcast in like a tight beam that
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: sort of generally diffused, and so you have to be
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: pretty close to Earth or have very very sensitive antennas
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: to even pick up our messages. And I guess you're
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: also imagining, or Cardachip was imagining the scenario where you're
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: broadcasting blindly, right, Like, if you're broadcasting blindly in all
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: possible directions and your hope that somebody listens to it,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: how much energy would you need for that? But if
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: you want a more focused communication, then you wouldn't need that, right,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: that's exactly right. If you don't know where people are,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: you need to broadcast in every direction, and so the
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: power of your message falls very quickly. It goes like
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: one over distance squared, just like the brightness of the
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: sun falls as you get further and further away from it,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: because the sun is not like focused like a laser
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: beam on your eyeball. And a good thing too, So
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: if you're broadcasting your message indiscriminately in every direction, then
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: it has to be super powerful for anybody to pick
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: it up. And it's a concrete example. The signals that
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: we sent from a recibo could only be received by
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: an Arecibo like telescope if it was less than one
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: light year away. And we know that there aren't any
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: other solar systems less than a light year away, so
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: aliens with our level of technology could not pick up
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: our signals even if they were around the closest star.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: M interesting. All right, Well, let's get into what this
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: could mean for our search for extraterrestrial life and whether
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: or not there are chartsians in other galaxies. That's a
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: very important question. But first let's take another quick break.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about the Cardashian scale, which is
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: a scale that physicists have invented as a way to
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: think about how much energy alien civilizations might be consuming
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: or have available to them to send out, Hey, we're
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: here a signal which we might be able to pick up,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: which I guess is important, right because if we have
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a whole project called set to explore or to look
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: for alien signals, it would be good to know if
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: we even have a chance of seeing signals from other
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: alien civilizations, right exactly. And it's a kind of thought
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: experiment that physicists like to think about. Let's make some
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: simple assumptions about the trajectory of civilizations and think about
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: who we're looking for. Are we looking for a fairly
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: young civilization like our own. Are we more likely to
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: only be able to spot very advanced civilizations. So let's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: try to spend a minute or so thinking about what
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: they might look like, how they might communicate, and what
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: technology they might have available to them. Right, And like
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: you said, like if we were to send a signal
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: out to another story, we would need a ton of
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: energy because the nearest star system is more than a
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: light year way, which means we would need a lot
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: of energy. So I guess to see an alien civilization
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: in another galaxy, or to hope to see an Asian
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: civilization in another galaxy sending out a signal that they're there,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: we would need to imagine an alien civilization pretty advanced, right,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: with an access to an enormous amount of energy. That's right,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: unless we were extraordinarily lucky and we happen to resolve
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: a single star in their galaxy and see them do
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: some crazy construction project on it, or they were manipulating
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: the star itself to pulse with messages that we could resolve.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: That would require crazy advanced technology and access to energy
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that we can't even imagine. Yeah, some fraction of all
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: the energy of a galaxy. And so that's where the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Kardaship scale would say. It's like that's another stage in
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: that scale, which is like, if you can harness all
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: of the energy in the galaxy, then maybe you might
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: put some of that energy to putting out a signal
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: which would make you visible to aliens or to humans
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: in other galaxies. Right, Yeah, maybe you have a prison
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: planet where you put all of your Kardashians and you
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: just want big flash and warning signs like do not
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: go here, young civilizations. I feel like you just took
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: it to another level against the Cardashians there. Now you're
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: talking about jailing them in planets. Remember we want them
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: on the podcast on Yeah, sorry, I'm talking about a
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: luxurious island just for alien Kardashians, private planet. Yes, and
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: you get to hang out with the Lockness Monster and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: pick Foot also future guests on our podcast. Yeah, that's right,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: stay tuned, keep listening. But this kind of thinking lets
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: you imagine the kinds of things that aliens might be
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: able to do if you have access to all the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: energy of your solar system or at your galaxy, you
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: could like move stars around, you could like obliterate planets.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: You can build new kinds of stars nobody had ever
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: seen before. You could have a whole new branch of engineering,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you know, galaxy engineering. Yeah, and so that takes us
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: to about stage three in the Cardaship scale. Right, that's
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: where you may be built toller panels around every star
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: in your galaxy. Is there a stage four? Can you
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: go bigger than that? Let's keep basically speculating. You want
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: to extrapolate our extrapolation, Sure, let's do it well. Cardasship
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: have ended his extrapolation at stage three, imagining only use
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: of the entire galaxy. But that was the nineteen sixty
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and it's been a popular topic for people to think about,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: and so there have been extensions to the Kardaship scale.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Stage four says, what if you could use all the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: energy in the universe? What is in the universe potentially infinite?
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: It is potentially infinite, absolutely, And this stage imagines not
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: just capturing all of the energy from all the stars
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: in each galaxy, but also somehow tapping into that mysterious
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: form of energy, dark energy, which is accelerating the expansion
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: of the universe and has a much bigger slice of
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the universe's energy budget than just the paltry matter in stars,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: which you might remember accounts for less than five percent
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: of the energy in the universe. Right, All the matter
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: in our universe only counts for five percent. Right, And
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: there's also dark matter and dark energy. Are you saying, like,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: even if we harness all the energy coming out of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: the stars of a galaxy, and even if you take
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: all of the energy in the matter of that galaxy,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that's still only five percent of all the energy available
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to you someone, Right, Yeah, And so if you want
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: to think big, right, then let's attack the biggest slice
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: of the pie. And most of the energy of the
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: universe is in dark energy. Sevent of all the energy
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: in the universe is now devoted to accelerating the expansion
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: of the universe. If you want to build a really
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: big engineering project, you might as well start with the
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: biggest slice. I wonder if maybe dark energy isn't engineering project, Daniel,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, if a Slies were basically speculating, I'm gonna
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: speculated dark energy is just aliens making the universe bigger. Well,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: that's a really clear idea, but you're not actually the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: first one to have it. One physicist Zoltan Gallantaie argued
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: that if there are civilizations that can do that, they
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: could not be detected because their activities would be indistinguishable
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: from the workings of the universe. We have no baseline
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: to compare them. To write, we are assuming that the
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: universe is driven mostly by natural processes. But if there
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: are civilizations out there that are type four and they've
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: been playing games with the universe, then that's what we've
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: been observing this entire your time. Are you saying that
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the laws of physics are indistinguishable from the workings of
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: a mysterious being. You're making the case for God basically, well,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: these civilizations would have almost godlike powers. We think they
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: would still be constrained by the laws of physics. But remember,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: we don't know what those laws are. We have no
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: understanding of dark energy. Really, we see that this is happening,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: but we do not understand the mechanism for it or
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: what is controlling it. So it is potentially possible that
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: there's an alien civilization out there with some knob and
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: they are driving the expansion of the universe. I mean
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: This is speculation on speculation, absolutely, but yes, we don't
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: understand the mechanism of it, so it could be down
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: to some alien civilization. This is a reduction of speculations
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: that what you're saying, we're going deep. Yeah, and there
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: are more levels. What what could be more powerful than
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: all the energy in the universe? Well, Stage five says,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: use all the energy in the multiverse? Right, Why be
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: limited to a single universe when apparently there's an infinite
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: number of possible universes out there for you to harness
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and manipulate. Yeah, why not, let's go there. So this
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: is a saving that the multiverse exists and that somehow
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: some alien cilvercision has access to all of these different
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: universes and also have the ability to harness their energy.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: You sound incredulous, and that's for a good reason, because
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty ridiculous idea. You're right, we don't even
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: know if the multiverse exists, Like, are there other universes
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: out there? If the multiverse does exist, is it the
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: flavor of multiverse that would allow us to communicate with
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: other universes? There are some in which these universes are
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: forever separate and can never communicate with each other, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: so that would prevent any alien civilization from harness and them.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: For example, the quantum multiverse from the Many Worlds interpretation
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics says that the universe splits every time
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: a quantum object has to make a decision. But you
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: can't ever access those other universes. But in principle there
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: are versions of the multiverse, or the other universes could
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: interact with ours, and so in principle, some aliens might
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: figure out how to manipulate those portals and somehow have
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: a cross universe civilization. I guess, though, well two things.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: First of all, I guess if you're using all the
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: energy that in the universe, wouldn't you be taking away
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that energy? Like if you're somehow using the dark energy
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: in our universe, wouldn't that stop the expansion of the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: universe potentially? Or maybe the dark energy is just like
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: a waste product of something else they're doing. Maybe this
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: is just like the crumbs on their table. I mean,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: let's think really big. I said, you're saying the expansion
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: of the universe is a byproduct of whatever nefarious or
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: maybe or I guess we can't judge pre judge, but whatever,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: you know, thing it is they're doing with the inherent
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: energy of the universe. Is that what you're saying, like,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: maybe there's something deeper than dark energy, and dark energy
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: is just like the smog of whatever process they're using
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to to steal the use the energy of the universe.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: M I'm just trying to anticipate what's going to happen
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: in season sixty million when we're only on season five thousand,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: so obviously there's a lot of dot dot dot happening.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: But yeah, potentially, are you equating us to like online
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: forums where people are posting fan theories. Is that all
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: physics is fan theories? I think I saw that in
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: a comic strip somewhere. Yeah, exactly, that's x ca CD.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: All theories are just fan fiction about the universe, And
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: in some sense, yes, that's what's happening here. We're trying
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: to imagine what an alien statilization might be, like, what
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: are the limits on it? Essentially, we're not suggesting that
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: there are aliens out there manipulating the universe and controlling
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: it and that dark energy is just their pollution, but
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: we're just trying to push up against the boundaries of
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: our thinking and wondering what is possible in the end,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Do we have arguments that suggest that that would be impossible?
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Because if not, let's keep an open mind to what
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: might be happening out there. The second thing I want
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to say was that I feel like that would have
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: been a fun sequel to the matrix to find out
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: that actually our universe is just like a battery for
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: somebody else's universe. Oh, the meta matrix. Yeah, the multi matrix,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the multi meta matrix. I like it. It's that one,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: all right. Well, this cardiship scale is a pretty interesting
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: way to think about aliens, what they might be doing,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: how big they can get, or I guess, you know,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: just pushing the idea of what can a sentient species
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: do in the universe, like what's possible for a sentient
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: entity or entities? Yeah, and it leaves completely aside the
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: very important question of what a sentient entity should do
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: with the universe. If you are capable of building Dyson
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: spheres that completely blot out every star in the sky,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: should you is that the right use for your technology?
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Should you be measuring your civilization by how much energy
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: of the universe you can capture for your own purposes.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe alien civilizations have taken another route, trying to live
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: harmoniously with the universe rather than trying to manipulate it
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: for their own ends. Wait, are you calling God an alien? Technically? Um,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: God would be an alien right unless they were born
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: on Earth. I don't know how you can have the
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: word technically god an alien in the same sentence. I
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: just don't get into I don't get it either. But
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: this is a natural sciences podcast, so I think that's allowed. Technically,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Bigfoot is a lockness monster. That's right. Technically it's all
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: natural science because it's being talked about naturally by scientists,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: so therefore it is natural science. Yeah, and this is
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: sort of the way that physicists think about civilizations. How
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: much energy do we have? How much energy is available
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: to us? It's of course not the only way to
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: think about civilizations. And one thing we're trying to do
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: in our civilization is actually tamped down our energy use. Right, Well,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: we talked earlier about how every year we increase our
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: energy used by three percent, and that might take us
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: to stage one civilization. Don't think about that like a goal.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: It's not like a bad We're gonna put on our civilization. Hey, look,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: we increased our energy used by ten thousand. Yeah. Right,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: that would probably be a bad thing for life on
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Earth if we were using so much energy. Yeah, or
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: be bad if we were using all the energy in
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: the universe and then stopping expansion and then accidentally, oops,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: we caused the universe to contract and crunch down. Was
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: that us who made the whole universe collapse into the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: black hole? Our apologies. Please take this voucher and try
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: civilization in another one of our multiverses. We should have
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: gone green much sooner. All right. Well, it's definitely fun
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: and interesting to think about these wild and crazy scenarios.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: But as you said, it is a little bit part
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: of science to imagine what could be possible, because you
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: might come up with something that you didn't think about
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: before that maybe shapes the future experiment or how you
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: look for answers in the universe. Yeah. And while we
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: sometimes think about natural science as very rigorous and found
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: it in experiments and high precision, an important part of
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: it which is just creative and exploratory and wondering about
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: what is possible. Sometimes the most fun parts of science
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: are when you're tackling a really big question that nobody
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: has tackled before, and so you have to begin with
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: a few crazy, fairly simple ideas. Many things just fun
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: to talk about Indians, which I think, let's be honest, Dan,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: is really the main point of your choosing your topic. Yes,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: I always do enjoy talking about aliens, and I hope
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: that the aliens listening to this podcast enjoy our baselist
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: speculation about their lives and motives. That's right, And if
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the Kardashians are aliens, they're also welcome to come on
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Open invitation to any Kardashian or Alien and
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: or alien. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: my Heart Radio. Visit the I Heart Radio, Apple Apple Podcasts,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H