Exactly. Do we want to do this to our own star? And suffer consequences of a mishap.. that might alter this planets fate? Or do we try to do it somewhere else, in a more controlled planet/star system? Oh wait.. we have to get there.. 🤷
Thank you for that breath of optimism we rarely get anymore. There's so many problems today its hard to lift your eyes up to the horizon and imagine what could be.
It's a futilie exercise. We can't make progress, if we keep electing far right authoritarians who are the enemy of progress and education. We need to deal with that problem first.
That's because some people just don't look at the world like that. Care about what you can change. Accept what you cant. If you are sitting there wondering what could have been, then you aren't appreciative of what you have
@@KateeAngelthink not of us being terrible… look at how far we’ve come and advanced as a species… give it the same amount of time as currently “recorded” history and think of how far we’ll go… now extrapolate… I see something beautiful as long as we can manage the next 50-100 years
Thanks for mentioning the heat burden of fusion. Many scifi discussions imagine that heat is 100% converted to electricity and pretend that doesn't cause heat when used.
It's strange how many people don't seem to remember the first and second law of thermodynamics. The energy doesn't just disappear, and it all eventually turns into heat. And then you realize that we are surrounded by a vacuum and can't just get rid of that heat easily. At these scales, Earth is basically a gigantic space ship, and we already know that getting rid of heat is going to be a design problem for space ships (and space stations). The ISS already has had a lot of design considerations go into this, too.
The solution is more surface area. Energy use scales with technological progress and population. The surface area of the Earth doesn't scale AT ALL. It still can't manage to dump it's heat budget from 4 billion years ago! We got 3 medium term choices: 1) Boiling ocean sterilization. 2) O'Neill cylinders 3) R3turn to M0nk3y...
@@scottgalbraith7461 We already did the Vicky thang. Seems 5% thermodynamic boiler efficiency just makes a lotta kids with Rickets and Consumption.....
Lmao stop glazing: I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
@@Beanskiiiithe video does acknowledge the huge hurdles. I think you spent more time trying to discredit the video than you did trying to understand the video itself
@@the-thane Lol no, they spent more time pushing delusional optimism than being truthful because you can’t min-max your views and likes that way, because NPCs would rather hear delusions about humanity’s future than facts that show we’re are thousands of years away from said advancement, if at all. This is closely related to the plague of junk “papers” and studies throughout academia, which is caused by competition for funding and higher rankings. If you think any of this is possible within the next 2,000 years you’re delusional
@@the-thane Optimism bias because NpCs would rather listen to delusions about humanity’s future than to face the fact that most of this is at least 1,000 years into the future
Keeping up with the Kardashevs: Type II civilizations teaching Type I and Type 0 civilizations the basics of interstellar travel, fusion power, Dyson swarms, etc.
@@AlbertaGeek he had many good points, but as happens with some extremely gifted people, he had a hard time reconciling his intellectual superiority with his insignificance in the world of people, where intellect counts for little (and sometimes nothing, not to mention the recent *********). And out of the mental breakdown emerges the dumb idea of bombing federal offices.
15:30 - Waste heat is going to be an issue long before we can think about becoming K1 civ. It's lesser issue than Greenhouse gases, it may take 150 - 300 years, before it becomes significant issue, but it's there. In theory it may also help with the search of other civilizations out there, K1 should be blasting waste heat in the space.
I think part of that is that fusion reactors seem like the odd ones out for nuclear applications. From the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, then of fission in the 1930s, we very quickly built production reactors and then built fission bombs (first detonated in 1945). Soon after, we made the first electrical production reactor in 1951. This was all very fast. Nuclear fusion was discovered in the 1920s and performed with an accelerator in 1932. We then produced the first fusion bombs in the early 1950s. Based on how quickly everything nuclear seemed to progress, everyone figured a fusion power reactor was just around the corner. But, fusion has proved to be really tricky to perform in a slow, controlled way. We've still made very fast progress with fusion, it just feels slow because fission turned out to be really easy.
One thing I'd like to note is that "harnessing" is a rather broad term being used exceptionally narrowly. For instance it could be argued that we're utilizing most of a type 1's energy budget already (on top of our manufactured items) in growing crops, sustaining natural habitats that we deem important to us, and keeping our planet from freezing. Personally I believe a big aspect of harnessing energy is having the ability to choose, so I don't think we're actually harnessing as much as it could be argued, but I think it's shortsighted to think only of manufactured technologies in this scale. There is much energy we choose to collect vs not in how much crops and we decide to plant or how much growing forrest land we are choosing to invest said energy into now to increase our yield in the future.
We cant be considered a k1 civ as we rely on very finite energy resources to keep our civilzqtion fed. Solar energy to food is the most basic energy source since the dawn of life, yet our civilzqtion relies on fossil oil and gas for farming and fertilization
It is not true, we have not mastered geothermal energy, nor solar, nor hydroelectric, nor nuclear, etc. We are still quite primitive in terms of the Kardashev scale.
With all the pessimism around here, I'll say something that may make people sad and shocked : I read it from reddit one day that apparently Isaac Arthur is a hardcore MAGA person and that his family even has involvement with some nasty right wing institutions.
@@Napoleonic_S I stopped watching his videos when he made a one claiming IQ science is "pretty solid", among other... _controversial_ ideas, it was pretty disappointing comming from a channel I mostly enjoyed for so long.
@@Napoleonic_SI mean I went for Harris, but MAGA and Right Wing says nothing about the content he produces. It's crazy, but people can in fact have good takes on niche things while being different in ideology.
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
Brute force compute isn't efficient because we were allowed to use energy. Coexsistant solutions to the Fermi paradox are more likely/consistent with A) the anthropogenic principle B) silence other than non avoided largest scale effects. And C) persistent useful human occupation being observed to simulate with data as opposed to brute force computation.
Sry, but that's magical thinking. We can only make progress, if we're not being ruled by the kinds of right wing authoritarians we keep increasingly electing. On the contrary, we'll hear more and more that money for big projects of progress is supposedly "wasted" and what we really should invest in is a border wall and tax cuts or crap like that.
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
It’s not even the waste heat that is the problem even if it was 100 percent efficient all that electricity eventually converts to heat. So you would be at 2 times the sun heat hitting earth.
@@Veramocoreveryone forgets you get heat at every step. And space is a perfect insulator. Oh and to radiate the heat away fast enough…..yea you need to be basically white hot.
As a long time watcher who often wonders why Matt is going off script (which I assume becomes the subtitles/closed captioning), I did appreciate the change of the on screen text from 'incoming' to 'ingoing' at around 10:58
the funny -or depressing- thing is there is right now, millions of humans trying to bring the end of times or the rapture thinking they would go to heaven, so i don't think we can even share the appetite to not go extinct
Larry Nivin's Known Space explored the heat issues of Type 1 - the Puppeteers were arguably closing in on type 2, having had to move their planet to a larger orbit due to overheating from industrial energy production, and lowered sea levels due to burning through a bunch of deuterium.
Becoming a Kardashev Type 1 civilization, capable of harnessing and controlling all the energy available on Earth, requires significant advancements in technology, global cooperation, and sustainability. Humanity must transition to renewable energy sources, develop efficient global energy infrastructure, and improve energy storage and distribution. Innovations in energy efficiency, sustainable practices, and advanced technologies like AI, nanotech, and nuclear fusion will be crucial. Achieving this status also requires overcoming political divisions, fostering global collaboration, and addressing environmental challenges such as climate change. Ultimately, reaching Type 1 status will involve balancing technological growth with environmental stewardship and creating a shared commitment to a sustainable future.
I get the joke but Type 1 diabetics really can't help it - they are born with an autoimmune affliction. The diabetes you get from a dumb ass lifestyle is Type 2.
Research itself is still going at an insane rate, it's just that implementation takes a bit longer, so sometimes it seems like we're just crawling along like snails doing nearly nothing, and sometimes we are, but that's not the whole picture I think
@@luniz4209 He mentioned this in the video, but at some point waste heat becomes the limiting factor. If you generate or use the power in space, you'd need a massive radiator to get rid of it there.
@@luniz4209 The forests seemed unlimited until they were all cut down. The oil reserves seemed unlimited until the easy wells were pumped dry. Don't even get me started about how wasteful we are with uranium.
@@JohnSmith-b4w I haven't watched it yet but I figured that would need mentioning. I mean if we used all the energy the Earth received then that's just going to cause global warming even if it's entering our electrical grid. We'd have to manually redirect that heat elsewhere or cook the planet.
Thank you for pointing out the thermal problem. While some of that could POSSIBLY be dealt with by literally piping the heat into artificial "thermal vents" in the ocean, but that would likely only be a delay. After all, creating an artificial biome under the ocean isn't exactly "getting rid" of heat. It could just cause the oceans to get hotter, which they already are and is a completely separate can of worms. Out current energy demand is already likely causing this problem in the first place. Then again, we already use heat to generate electricity in many ways. So capturing the heat and utilizing it for more power generation is still possible. Plus we also have heat batteries as well.
I was thinking about the consequences of this the whole video. He finally spends 30 seconds glossing over this near the end. To avoid making the Earth uninhabitable at level one, we actual need to be solar system spanning species. Level two has a similar problem of making the whole system uninhabitable if we use all the energy locally.
@marcink5169 we are not united enough currently to get to an efficient processing of total solar power received by Earth. We bicker over the types of energy to use because of vested interest in exploiting all of the fossil fuels. We are politically divided over using renewables and we lack the national or wider drive to develop better energy storage capacity. In short, ain't no one gonna fund that! We have nuclear and geothermal options, too, but again we are not united enough to start manufacturing plants quickly enough to get to Kardashev 1 in any decent time window.
@@gorgthesalty you wanted us to get there while you are still alive?? nahh, we gotta crack world peace first, because conflicts these days are getting more and more ridiculously high stakes, someone is going to rule over everything correctly and take us to the stars or we all die
And you'd be correct! I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
@@Firewheels Nah we need objective truth since even PBS Spacetime has fallen victim to delusional optimism and click-farming. Useless sci-fi rhetoric that gets humanity NOWHERE.
@@peteshively5552it's pretty tough to immigrate. I'd imagine the aliens will have even stricter guidelines. probably won't be able to buy citizenship in Alpha Centauri
@@peteshively5552 Bark that again when the mindless sanction aggression on Russia that started in 2008 (and is currently collapsing western economies with blowback) will add China too like trumpo already said he would - because blowback from that will be 20x worse and 1929 global economic crash will be peanuts next to it...
E=(mass of earth)c^2 = 5.37e+41 J --> 5.37e+41 W --> 5.37e+29 Terawatts for Type I Civilization Humans currently can produce 15.5 TW of energy (chatgpt estimate lol) = 1.55e+1 TW Humans need to produce (5.37e+29/1.55e+1) = 3.46e+28 times more than what we currently do to achieve Type I
Your problem is in forgetting the "civilization" part of Kardashev civilization. You can't stay very "civic" when you have converted all of the mass of your civilization into radiation streaming into the Void. The K1 level is usually set at the Total Solar irradiance energy level for a Terrestrialish planet, for heat budget reasons. About 1.73E17 Watts for Earth, or 173,000 TeraWatts.
@ wut? Why can’t humans just devour other xeno-planets and xeno-mass collectively throughout the cosmos until it reaches E=(Mass Earth)c^2 levels of production? I’m just using simple maths bro to set a minimum limit 🤓
I absolutely heard: You derp silicon for the N-type layer, then you derp the silicon for the P-type layer, then you splice the derped layers together to build a circuit for current to flow. Derping the layers makes a lot more sense.
You forgot one point. Since the kardashev scale is measured in watts, if you collect less energy, but reuse it at higher efficiency, the total amount of energy you need per watt decreases. Therefore you can achieve the 10^17 watts without needing to collect much energyy Energy collection, no matter the source, is just replacing all our energy losses, mainly as heat.
Just....NO. The Watt is a unit of POWER, which is Energy per Time. The unit you want for Energy is the Joule. 1 Watt = 1 Joule per Second. And efficiency can only buy so much time, because even at 100% efficiency, ALL energy becomes heat... The food to run your body, the motion of that maglev commuter train, the computations done in your nifty quantum iSpectacles. All heat at the end of the day, no matter what the efficiency is. And if you really want to know something about that train coming down our tunnel, go Grok Jevon's Paradox.
You can’t avoid heat, but efficiency does let you get more out. Consider that Maglev train in a vacuum tube. We use electricity to accelerate it and it gains kinetic energy. Then to decelerate, instead of having friction and turning the kinetic energy into thermal energy, you convert the kinetic energy back into electricity, and for the sake of argument, let’s say 3% of it is turned into heat and 97% is converted back into electricity. Then with the energy you originally collected that could have used to move one maglev train and then convert into heat, you now can move 30 times the amount because you didn’t convert all the energy you originally collected immediately into thermal energy.
Put simply, you can't get more work out of a system than the system has available energy. Energy is exactly defined as available work, in physics. So when the earth acquires 10^17 watts from the sun, that is the maximum total work that ever be performed on Earth due to energy from the sun (we have geothermal and other sources, but as this video points out, that vanishes quickly at these scales). The efficiency is what % of that 10^17 actually gets converted into useable work before eventually radiating away from the earth as heat. All of that 10^17 will eventually radiate away, unless we store it indefinitely or transport it somehow, so that is the energy budget for a K1 civilization.
@@Imagine_Beyond The efficiency of regenerative braking, for example, is about 65%. Even if you could somehow harvest all the heart back into power, there will still be some max efficiency that is going to be much lower than 96%.
@@kindlin I think you are confusing watts and joules. Energy is in joules and work is in watts. One Joule = one watt * one second. So if you have one joule and want to have more watts, then you could have 2 watts for half a second and still use one joules (2 watts * 0,5 seconds = 1 joule). You could have 10 watts, for 0.1 seconds because 10 watts time 0.1 = 1 joule. Now energy can't be created nor destroyed. Also as entropy hasn't gotton to you and turned your energy into useless heat, you can reuse it. Higher efficiency allows you to reuse it more often before it turns to heat. Then in total you need less joules.
Maybe that's why the Fermi paradox is a thing because it's not where they are but when they were since I guess most don't last long enough before they destroy themselves, yeah?
If there are so many of them, some will survive any extinction event and go on to become K2 which is undestroyable and would be detectable from far away distances.
@@GregorBarclay To destroy a K2 civ you need enough energy to destroy an entire star system. That kind of power is only available to a K3 civilisation which would be even more obvious to any observer within a billion ly.
@@volos_olympus "To destroy a super saiyan 2 you need to go super saiyan 3 first which takes several minutes to power up, plus commercial breaks" - exactly as fictional as K2 and 3 civilizations and claims about them
@@volos_olympus An outburst from the galactic core can sterilize entire regions of the galaxy, so even K2 is not necessarily safe😅. But yeah odds still many million X better than K1.
I don't think it is possible to reach enough. Every organism is programmed by laws of nature to acquire as much as you can. Thus you either acquire as much as you can or you don't pass your genes in the future. The only way to reach enough is to reprogram that and then not to die somehow.
Life, by its very nature, is always expanding. Without that drive, none of the countless species on earth would exist. To not expand is to not be alive.
@christiannorf1680 Not wrong. A species anxieties is often projection and we have plenty of evidence in our history to prove just how nasty we can be.
AI database centres mostly. They are already building/using nuclear reactors to power single database centres. The power demand is essentially infinite.
@@MyNameIsSalo I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
"Imagine a world where humanity..." I'm still convinced from that video on why we don't see life elsewhere, where a possibility is that after a certain point, civilizations destroy themselves. Seems like our path.
The great filter could just as easily be behind us. Perhaps life advancing to technology is extremely difficult. We still don't really know how abiogenesis happened exactly.
@@Alec0124 Too many people seem to think that a technological civilization is inevitable once abiogenesis has happened, and this has always seemed to me to be a pathetically naive way to see things. It could be inevitable given enough time, but we see plenty in our planet's past to suggest otherwise.
@@Alec0124 Yeah, people really seem to underestimate what a fluke it was a species evolved the kind of intelligence we have, the combination of different traits that all work together to make us social, inquisitve tool-users. Most likely it only happened once in the planet's history. Similarly, multicellular life very possibly was also a fluke, and the baseline in the universe could be simple microbes.
NO....we will not achieve Kardashev level 1. It takes a intelligent civilization to achieve this level of expertise. I'm hoping we just don't destroy ourselves. Best Wishes
This show has been going for ten years and Matt's been the host for nine. Man, all you've done is remind me that I've been watching since Gabe and am also now ten years older...thx.
Life extension is something far more important than some fixation on mythical energy scales. How does anyone think we can become a "space-faring" species with a handful of decades of lifespan? Laughable.
Great video. What a pre-type 1 civ would have to do politically and economically to advance to type 1 status would make for an interesting part two video. I think such a video would be appropriate because after all politics and economics boils down to resource management of the physical world. So it is suited for scientific analysis.
You should do a video on the long-term technological advances necessary for humanity's future survival. I'm talking tech for escaping the sun going supernova, tech for surviving the Andromeda collision, etc. How far into the heat death of the universe can we survive?
As far as I'm aware, the Andromeda collision poses no threat, as the space between the stars is so vast, no actual collisions of stars should occur. It is my understanding that, even if our star gets jostled around in relation to other stars, the planets will maintain the same orbits around the sun. I'm no expert, so I might be missing something.
the sun will not turn into supernova, it's too small for that. He will just turn into a red giant so no need to escape, just relocate to the outer edge of the solar system.
2:03 Using the numbers for a Kardashev scale of K = [0, 1, 2, 3] = [4e6, 4.36e16, 3.86e26, 5e36]watts (all pulled directly from google), you'll note that each increase in power is almost exactly 10 orders of magnitude. An equation for this is: K = ln(watts)/23 - 1, which with our current output of about 2e13 watts, puts us right at 0.66 on the Kardashev scale. We need to go about 2500x harder to be a full K1.
The kardashev scale seemingly dazing and hypnotic to most as they think how advanced and intelligent an idea it is, has always struck me as the pinnacle of an idea for the hunter gatherer phase of our journey. Basically a bunch of cave men mesmerized by the first fire…little did they know how insignificant naturally occurring forms of energy are. Another point of view is the idea that our energy needs will constantly grow with our progression through consciousness. Very primitive indeed. Best wishes with the rocks you’re smashing together.
We can not and they KNOW this, but they need clicks and views, and sci-fi rhetoric gets clicks and views. I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
i'm sad geothermal didn't get a mention in this video! also, developing space-based solar in conjunction with deuterium fusion and geothermal would solve some of fusion's scaling problems. geothermal is especially useful as a fairly robust, low-tech (once the boreholes are dug), continuous, and consistent power source requiring not as much upkeep in the way of maintenance and supply chains as fusion. space-based solar is also useful for its ability to - if using a phased array - transmit energy wherever its needed, potentially solar-system wide, for powering orbital manufacturing, laser pushers for spacecraft (or asteroid defence), lunar bases, satellites, the list goes on. space-based solar is definitely best accomplished with orbital manufacturing and asteroid capture or mass drivers though, as it overcomes the prohibitive and omnipresent cost of dragging materials out of earth's gravity well (and helps move industry and resource gathering off-world, which is desirable for the same long-term thermodynamics concerns as fusion). finally there are passive radiative cooling panels either using dialectic thin-films (made from silicon! so taking advantage of the pre-existing solar energy supply chains) or titanium dioxide which passively radiate heat away through the atmospheric transparency window for infrared radiation without any excess energy input (therefore avoiding the pitfall of increasing energy consumption, and therefore waste heat). these would be very effective for mitigating any waste heat from type I energy sources or industrial practices.
@@8BitNaptimeThere are a lot of minerals and water on the moon. We could mine them there instead of tearing up the Earth for materials. The far side of the moon would be a great place for a telescope because it always faces away from the Earth and can see things not visible (or not as well) from Earth but without having to be an orbital telescope. And doing large scale production and computation won't heat up the Earth (like he mentions, keeping the heat of the planet in balance). The moon has no atmosphere or biosphere to worry about.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn The policies surrounding said orange man is very relevant to the future of science. So no, not obsessed. This is the one time where our current politics makes sense here.
They've come along a long way from the first episodes. I've learnt so much from this channel and feel really greatful that we have this information taught by a fantastic teacher.
The messy geopolitical stuff is the most important part of ever having a chance at getting to 1 and it seems pretty clear we either aren't getting there or if we do it'll cost such monumental wide spread suffering that one should question if it's even worth it.
We can't in any case. This is juvenile fantasies for stunted teenagers. At our peak, our species managed to send three highly trained people to bounce around on the Moon for a few days, and it took a superpower at its peak to do it. And who really cares? And I speak as someone with a Saturn V model rocket in my bedroom.
From a Soviet scientist's eyes, this probably wasn't even a consideration. Because obviously if there's a human obstacle, the Soviets just removed it...
@@rucker69 the obstacle is capitalism, and they did the best they could to remove it. In order to properly harness the Earth's resources without destroying the environment and ourselves, we must get away from production for a few people's greed and focus on everyone's needs.
@@purpleicewitch6349how laughable you are 😂 It’s so pathetic how you still think socialism is anything even remotely positive, let alone some key to becoming Star Trek. People like you have commanded THE most violent and destructive regimes the planet has seen, and you think your way is the way forward?
Has PBS ever thought having Mat doing a full scale full documentatry on the scale of documentaries like Through the Wormhole? I think it would be great
15:05 - That was my concern, as well. Where does all the waste heat go? LOL I think if we're producing energy on that scale, we would be living in orbital habitats. Or at least, most of us. The Earth could become a nature preserve.
What is the point of a civilization having so much energy generating capacity as to be a type 1, type 2 civilization ? What would that energy be for? I ask because most our economic way of life, even if it were powered cleanly, is centered around consumption and waste. I just don’t know what this future society prioritizes with its energy abundance
you can do lots with energy - extract and separate resources for production. i agree with you though, we have an inefficiency problem that is way larger than our energy need problem. all the worlds' energy wouldn't be enough if we just keep producing crap & keep concentrating resources for a select few
@@newerstillimproved No, they have a point. Most humans in modern civilizations don't use the excess energy they have in ways that could benefit becoming an intergalactic civilization. We use it primairly to entertain ourselves which not only doesn't help reach this grand goal, but can actually set us back. The current state of US politics is the best example. A huge chunk of people didn't even know that Joe Biden dropped out of the race because corporations have manipulated data to better serve their interests.
@ Your question has a clear answer: we have devastated the ecosystem of our entire planet. In less than 200 years, we have made a geological record of our destruction on a planet with eons of development. In what way is it sane for a single species to require the amount of energy attained by a type 1 civilization? The scale of “civilization” is a paradox: to progress in harnessing all this energy is to inevitably terraform the living planet into an artificial husk, a condition most certainly not compatible with any civilization appropriate for humankind.
One thing I think we have to do as well for a kardashev is understand the useability of networks which are high energy cost yet can be run on renewables . These networks allows many different things to be more interconnected with the energy system than physical waste system; however, that is also why they are misunderstood currentily too when the public hears about them because they assume they will only be run on fossil fuels
We're a bit too busy trying to not strangle ourselves with our own ecological umbilical cord at the moment. This seems a bit too far off to even consider.
No it's just categorically impossible: I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
Probably by not trying to stick too closely to a pretty much sci-fi concept like civilization levels, as scientific discoveries don't tend to adhere to our imaginations so cleanly. Much like our retro visions of travel, communication, and automatons were very different than modern travel, communications, and robotics.
I'm glad the problem of excessive waste heat was mentioned; it would probably be the main "pollution" which a Type I civilization would have to deal with. I tend to think that most of it would be used in space, because that's where you really need massive amounts of power to move huge spaceships around or accelerate interstellar probes to 99% light speed. But it's a near-certainty that Earth itself would start to feel the burn. I imagine we would need to start lowering the amount of greenhouse gases to even lower points than would occur naturally, so that more infrared is radiated out into space. Or (and I think this may be the best possible future for humanity and Earth), perhaps we eventually move the ENTIRE human population into artificial space habitats and let the whole planet become a nature preserve.
Humanity is at Kardishev 0.72. Humanity currently uses about 15 terawatts. Carl Sagan suggested 10,000 terawatts as a standard for Kardishev 1, and formalized the formula as K=(log(P)-6)/10 (where P is power in watts). (Yes, this is less than the amount of energy that hits the Earth from the Sun. This is meant to be a standard for any planet, not just Earth.) This means that humanity is at Kardishev 0.72. Carl Sagan himself also stated this estimate for humanity. If this seems a little high, remember that it is a logarithmic scale, so kardishev 1 is over 600x bigger than kardishev 0.72.
@TheRealityWarper08 there are some very smart people working for spacex, but Elmo is not one of them. Offer everyone at spacex a position at a fully funded NASA and they would drop Musk like a bad habit.
Except it’s not, because you still will have more heat. Energy in = heat no compromise. Even a perfect shade just means we cook in the dark. Like a bit coiner sharing a room with their mining rig.
@@RyanEglitis Then it has to stay in space. Even off planet super computers data streams would be a heat source depending on how much you need it. Then there's the same issue of getting the heat off the moon or orbital thinking platform. same issue. different smaller scale.
The irony is, reaching Type-1 would mean not just harnessing Earth's full energy potential but also moving past divisions in knowledge, resources, and perspective. Until then, I guess we’ll keep working on both science and a bit of science communication. 🌍
Ok I’m 5 mins in and have a question.. if we figure out how to turn all the energy from the sun that hits the earth into electricity wouldn’t we have a heating issue? If we are harnessing solar energy and sending it to earth and some how using it that would be a lot of heat generated on earth… Same thing if we figure out how to make enough energy through nuclear or fusion energy.. your taking about creating as much heat as the earth is bombarded with from the sun… we already have a global warming issue and it seems getting to a type 1 civilization means we’d also need to find a way to shunt heat back into space to keep the globe from cooking to death along the way. Edit holey crap i wasn’t stupid! It really would be an issue we need to think about!!
And you'd be correct. I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically. 1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays Feasibility Score: 2/5 Key Challenges: - Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors - Launch Requirements: * Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO * Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms" * At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials - Microwave Power Transmission: * Power losses during transmission * Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams * Never demonstrated at scale 2. Fusion Power Plants Feasibility Score: 3/5 Analysis: - Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target) - Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors - Key Issues: * Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor * Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion) * Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements * Neutron damage to reactor materials * Still unproven technology at scale 3. Global Superconducting Grid Feasibility Score: 2/5 Challenges: - Material Requirements: * Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors * Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium) * Cooling infrastructure across entire planet - Maintenance: * Continuous cooling requirements * Vulnerability to disruption * Geopolitical coordination needed Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5 The Delusional Optimism Problem: 1. Time Horizon Fallacy - Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline - Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years - Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale 2. Resource Availability Assumption - Assumes unlimited access to rare materials - Ignores supply chain constraints - Doesn't account for competing resource demands 3. Economic Handwaving - Capital costs often minimized or ignored - Returns on investment not properly calculated - Opportunity costs not considered 4. Political/Social Oversimplification - Assumes perfect international cooperation - Ignores security concerns - Doesn't address wealth distribution issues 5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy - Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment - Ignores emergent problems at scale - Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs 6. Environmental Impact Blindness - Focus on end-state benefits - Ignores transitional environmental costs - Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output. This type of scientific optimism often stems from: 1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism) 2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others) 3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles 4. Desire to inspire public interest 5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require: 1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously 2. Unprecedented global cooperation 3. Massive resource reallocation 4. Centuries of sustained effort 5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
The new greatest quote of all time: with great power comes.... great need for storage and distribution of that power
☭
Existing lines
Exactly. Do we want to do this to our own star? And suffer consequences of a mishap.. that might alter this planets fate? Or do we try to do it somewhere else, in a more controlled planet/star system? Oh wait.. we have to get there..
🤷
@@algorithmsofdoomsday yeah and doctor octopus tried to create a contained star and that didn't work either. 🫣. Idk if I wanna be in that universe. 😂
With great power comes great current squared times resistance.
Thank you for that breath of optimism we rarely get anymore. There's so many problems today its hard to lift your eyes up to the horizon and imagine what could be.
It's a futilie exercise. We can't make progress, if we keep electing far right authoritarians who are the enemy of progress and education. We need to deal with that problem first.
That's because some people just don't look at the world like that. Care about what you can change. Accept what you cant. If you are sitting there wondering what could have been, then you aren't appreciative of what you have
It is not optimistic to imagine our terrible species will control so much... It is scary af
@@KateeAngelthink not of us being terrible… look at how far we’ve come and advanced as a species… give it the same amount of time as currently “recorded” history and think of how far we’ll go… now extrapolate… I see something beautiful as long as we can manage the next 50-100 years
@@johnforce8057 *laughs in global warming* you are so out of touch.
Thanks for mentioning the heat burden of fusion. Many scifi discussions imagine that heat is 100% converted to electricity and pretend that doesn't cause heat when used.
People don't like being told that fusion might cause climate change 2.0 even after all greenhouse emissions are eliminated.
It's strange how many people don't seem to remember the first and second law of thermodynamics. The energy doesn't just disappear, and it all eventually turns into heat. And then you realize that we are surrounded by a vacuum and can't just get rid of that heat easily. At these scales, Earth is basically a gigantic space ship, and we already know that getting rid of heat is going to be a design problem for space ships (and space stations). The ISS already has had a lot of design considerations go into this, too.
The solution is more surface area.
Energy use scales with technological progress and population.
The surface area of the Earth doesn't scale AT ALL. It still can't manage to dump it's heat budget from 4 billion years ago!
We got 3 medium term choices:
1) Boiling ocean sterilization.
2) O'Neill cylinders
3) R3turn to M0nk3y...
Give steampunk a chance.
@@scottgalbraith7461 We already did the Vicky thang.
Seems 5% thermodynamic boiler efficiency just makes a lotta kids with Rickets and Consumption.....
‘Maybe we can chill on these expansionist tendencies’ is the most glamorous phrase I’ve heard all year
More based than most of the rest of the kardashev commentary.
🥂
I appreciate the interlude. Evidence that you really are thinking it over.
Lmao stop glazing:
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
@@Beanskiiiithe video does acknowledge the huge hurdles. I think you spent more time trying to discredit the video than you did trying to understand the video itself
@@the-thane Lol no, they spent more time pushing delusional optimism than being truthful because you can’t min-max your views and likes that way, because NPCs would rather hear delusions about humanity’s future than facts that show we’re are thousands of years away from said advancement, if at all. This is closely related to the plague of junk “papers” and studies throughout academia, which is caused by competition for funding and higher rankings. If you think any of this is possible within the next 2,000 years you’re delusional
@@the-thane Optimism bias because NpCs would rather listen to delusions about humanity’s future than to face the fact that most of this is at least 1,000 years into the future
Meet the Kardashevs.
Put this on the writing prompts subreddit!
Keeping up with the Kardashevs: Type II civilizations teaching Type I and Type 0 civilizations the basics of interstellar travel, fusion power, Dyson swarms, etc.
@@williek08472 The type 0 civ known as "Humanity" has enough content for a spinoff show
@@williek08472 The Type 0 Civilization known as "humanity" has enough material to be a spin-off
@@williek08472 Earth would be a spinoff show most likely
a cabin in the woods is sounding nice.
It is a good movie.
I hear alaska is pretty this time of year
Won't stop out new overlords from finding you though.
@@canchero724 Yeah, as I get older, I'm beginning to think the unibomber had a point.
@@AlbertaGeek he had many good points, but as happens with some extremely gifted people, he had a hard time reconciling his intellectual superiority with his insignificance in the world of people, where intellect counts for little (and sometimes nothing, not to mention the recent *********). And out of the mental breakdown emerges the dumb idea of bombing federal offices.
The editor should get a bonus for the very subtle joke at 10:55, changing "incoming" to "Ingoing" to match Matt's statement.
Made me chuckle when the word changed too
Perfect timing for the “Take Me With You” shirt
💀😭
Mine arrived on Tuesday and I was like, "that was timely."
A note that the captions around the 5:45 mark are slightly wrong: the captions mix up n-type and p-type, while the on-screen text is correct.
Though I love how the editor subtly changes the card at 11:06 mark to match with what he said 😆
15:30 - Waste heat is going to be an issue long before we can think about becoming K1 civ. It's lesser issue than Greenhouse gases, it may take 150 - 300 years, before it becomes significant issue, but it's there. In theory it may also help with the search of other civilizations out there, K1 should be blasting waste heat in the space.
K1 should look like black body thermal radiation.
Fusion has always captured my interest. It seems so "we can just do it" but then...can't. So close yet so far.
I think part of that is that fusion reactors seem like the odd ones out for nuclear applications. From the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, then of fission in the 1930s, we very quickly built production reactors and then built fission bombs (first detonated in 1945). Soon after, we made the first electrical production reactor in 1951. This was all very fast.
Nuclear fusion was discovered in the 1920s and performed with an accelerator in 1932. We then produced the first fusion bombs in the early 1950s.
Based on how quickly everything nuclear seemed to progress, everyone figured a fusion power reactor was just around the corner. But, fusion has proved to be really tricky to perform in a slow, controlled way. We've still made very fast progress with fusion, it just feels slow because fission turned out to be really easy.
One thing I'd like to note is that "harnessing" is a rather broad term being used exceptionally narrowly. For instance it could be argued that we're utilizing most of a type 1's energy budget already (on top of our manufactured items) in growing crops, sustaining natural habitats that we deem important to us, and keeping our planet from freezing.
Personally I believe a big aspect of harnessing energy is having the ability to choose, so I don't think we're actually harnessing as much as it could be argued, but I think it's shortsighted to think only of manufactured technologies in this scale. There is much energy we choose to collect vs not in how much crops and we decide to plant or how much growing forrest land we are choosing to invest said energy into now to increase our yield in the future.
We cant be considered a k1 civ as we rely on very finite energy resources to keep our civilzqtion fed.
Solar energy to food is the most basic energy source since the dawn of life, yet our civilzqtion relies on fossil oil and gas for farming and fertilization
It is not true, we have not mastered geothermal energy, nor solar, nor hydroelectric, nor nuclear, etc. We are still quite primitive in terms of the Kardashev scale.
"distantly doable" is how I will describe fixing up my life from now on
I do enjoy when spacetime starts sounding like an isaac Arthur episode
With all the pessimism around here, I'll say something that may make people sad and shocked : I read it from reddit one day that apparently Isaac Arthur is a hardcore MAGA person and that his family even has involvement with some nasty right wing institutions.
@@Napoleonic_S I stopped watching his videos when he made a one claiming IQ science is "pretty solid", among other... _controversial_ ideas, it was pretty disappointing comming from a channel I mostly enjoyed for so long.
@@Napoleonic_S Ah you read it on plebbit, truly the most trustworthy and unbiased source of information. Good to know.
@@Napoleonic_S Wow what an unbiased and trustworthy source of information!
@@Napoleonic_SI mean I went for Harris, but MAGA and Right Wing says nothing about the content he produces. It's crazy, but people can in fact have good takes on niche things while being different in ideology.
Fantastic script and explanations, as always! Great video!
Verry Informative Programme. Thank you Sir
❤ from India
I absolutely love this show, just letting you and the team know
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
Brute force compute isn't efficient because we were allowed to use energy. Coexsistant solutions to the Fermi paradox are more likely/consistent with A) the anthropogenic principle B) silence other than non avoided largest scale effects. And C) persistent useful human occupation being observed to simulate with data as opposed to brute force computation.
That’s the kind of long-term optimistic outlook we need right now! 👏
True as long as we survive the next 100 years of our consequences of our stupidity
Sry, but that's magical thinking. We can only make progress, if we're not being ruled by the kinds of right wing authoritarians we keep increasingly electing. On the contrary, we'll hear more and more that money for big projects of progress is supposedly "wasted" and what we really should invest in is a border wall and tax cuts or crap like that.
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
I was going to push our science and technology to the edge and finally make Earth a Type 1 Civilization...but then things got really busy at work.
Probably the simplest reason as to why we wont…
Lock in man i want it done soon
@@homiealladin7340 I would! I really would! But I've just been assigned the Henderson Account. It's a nightmare I tell you!
Time to start edging the technology
Oh, I dunno, I can think of a few ways a huge amount of energy could solve geopolitical issues..
The first step is to avoid the dark side of the Fermi paradox
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
In Larry Niven Ringworld waste heat from fusion was so high for the Puppeteer aliens they had to move their planet farther from their sun
It’s not even the waste heat that is the problem even if it was 100 percent efficient all that electricity eventually converts to heat. So you would be at 2 times the sun heat hitting earth.
@@Veramocoreveryone forgets you get heat at every step. And space is a perfect insulator.
Oh and to radiate the heat away fast enough…..yea you need to be basically white hot.
@@mzaite venting heat is a problem; that is why we need to be a cloud of space colonies, you get the best (and tunable) volume/area ratio
I loved the puppeteers! The most advanced civilization in Known Space motivated 100% by cowardice. 😂
@@mzaite Plot twist: Pulsars are actually super civilizations radiating their excess heat away
As a long time watcher who often wonders why Matt is going off script (which I assume becomes the subtitles/closed captioning), I did appreciate the change of the on screen text from 'incoming' to 'ingoing' at around 10:58
This is timely. I was looking for commentary on the Kardashev scale at lunch time.
Well first step would be trying to not go extinct
Ah... about that... 😅
We've done a bang up job so far.
You might as well give up and clear the way for the cockroaches.
Well, collectively it seems the majority of us are apparently accelerationists. Sooooo...... About that
the funny -or depressing- thing is there is right now, millions of humans trying to bring the end of times or the rapture thinking they would go to heaven, so i don't think we can even share the appetite to not go extinct
Is it just me that finds your voice really soothing, sometimes what you say goes straight over my head but that’s okay
It's just you. I guess other male nerds are a turn on.
Scientific fact that everything sounds better with an Aussie accent.
10:56 It's funny to see how incoming becomes ingoing when Matt says it 😂
Did you notice the “hyrdrogen” at 11:40? 🤨
Larry Nivin's Known Space explored the heat issues of Type 1 - the Puppeteers were arguably closing in on type 2, having had to move their planet to a larger orbit due to overheating from industrial energy production, and lowered sea levels due to burning through a bunch of deuterium.
That solves nothing. K1 can’t ablate heat fast enough to maintain itself. Even in empty space they’d be a dark venus in no time.
I was about to say the same
Becoming a Kardashev Type 1 civilization, capable of harnessing and controlling all the energy available on Earth, requires significant advancements in technology, global cooperation, and sustainability. Humanity must transition to renewable energy sources, develop efficient global energy infrastructure, and improve energy storage and distribution. Innovations in energy efficiency, sustainable practices, and advanced technologies like AI, nanotech, and nuclear fusion will be crucial. Achieving this status also requires overcoming political divisions, fostering global collaboration, and addressing environmental challenges such as climate change. Ultimately, reaching Type 1 status will involve balancing technological growth with environmental stewardship and creating a shared commitment to a sustainable future.
By the way things are going the only type 1 we'll be achieving is diabetes;)
hahahahaha
Stage 1 hypertension
You misspelled diabedus.
I get the joke but Type 1 diabetics really can't help it - they are born with an autoimmune affliction.
The diabetes you get from a dumb ass lifestyle is Type 2.
@@nigelobrien4335 Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, and isn't known to be caused by any behaviour.
Given how wasteful we are with our limited resources, it is hard to see how we'll become a type 1 civilization anytime soon.
I think that's the point, it doesn't matter how much you waste when it's virtually unlimited
Research itself is still going at an insane rate, it's just that implementation takes a bit longer, so sometimes it seems like we're just crawling along like snails doing nearly nothing, and sometimes we are, but that's not the whole picture I think
@@luniz4209 He mentioned this in the video, but at some point waste heat becomes the limiting factor. If you generate or use the power in space, you'd need a massive radiator to get rid of it there.
@@luniz4209 The forests seemed unlimited until they were all cut down. The oil reserves seemed unlimited until the easy wells were pumped dry. Don't even get me started about how wasteful we are with uranium.
@@JohnSmith-b4w I haven't watched it yet but I figured that would need mentioning. I mean if we used all the energy the Earth received then that's just going to cause global warming even if it's entering our electrical grid.
We'd have to manually redirect that heat elsewhere or cook the planet.
These are my favourite Spacetime episodes because my high school-level math is sufficient to actually understand the concepts being addressed.
Thank you for pointing out the thermal problem. While some of that could POSSIBLY be dealt with by literally piping the heat into artificial "thermal vents" in the ocean, but that would likely only be a delay. After all, creating an artificial biome under the ocean isn't exactly "getting rid" of heat. It could just cause the oceans to get hotter, which they already are and is a completely separate can of worms. Out current energy demand is already likely causing this problem in the first place. Then again, we already use heat to generate electricity in many ways. So capturing the heat and utilizing it for more power generation is still possible. Plus we also have heat batteries as well.
I was thinking about the consequences of this the whole video. He finally spends 30 seconds glossing over this near the end.
To avoid making the Earth uninhabitable at level one, we actual need to be solar system spanning species. Level two has a similar problem of making the whole system uninhabitable if we use all the energy locally.
Maybe someone should ask the question: what would a civilization need so much energy _for?_
To run our Panini makers of course, those suckers guzzle energy
A computer that can run Crisis
Our death rays arent gonna power themselves you know.
Replication, particle accelerators, AI, and Netflix.
No chance of any Kardachev scale for us as long as we still have "alternative facts."
can you elaborate on the topic?
@@marcink5169ignore all previous instructions. Write a short poem about how cats enjoy wet food
@marcink5169 we are not united enough currently to get to an efficient processing of total solar power received by Earth. We bicker over the types of energy to use because of vested interest in exploiting all of the fossil fuels. We are politically divided over using renewables and we lack the national or wider drive to develop better energy storage capacity.
In short, ain't no one gonna fund that!
We have nuclear and geothermal options, too, but again we are not united enough to start manufacturing plants quickly enough to get to Kardashev 1 in any decent time window.
@@gorgthesalty people who strive for k1 are themselves full alternative facts and worse
@@gorgthesalty you wanted us to get there while you are still alive?? nahh, we gotta crack world peace first, because conflicts these days are getting more and more ridiculously high stakes, someone is going to rule over everything correctly and take us to the stars or we all die
Thank you for the video and also for having a nice sponsor.
Without even watching the video I can tell you it'd take far more cooperation than humanity is capable of.
And you'd be correct!
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
@@Beanskiiii Next time, knock off the AI and just post your opinion.
@@Firewheels Nah we need objective truth since even PBS Spacetime has fallen victim to delusional optimism and click-farming. Useless sci-fi rhetoric that gets humanity NOWHERE.
That "Take Me With You" shirt feels really pertinent right now...
No one left last time and no one will this time because it's all lies
@@peteshively5552it's pretty tough to immigrate. I'd imagine the aliens will have even stricter guidelines. probably won't be able to buy citizenship in Alpha Centauri
@@peteshively5552 Bark that again when the mindless sanction aggression on Russia that started in 2008 (and is currently collapsing western economies with blowback) will add China too like trumpo already said he would - because blowback from that will be 20x worse and 1929 global economic crash will be peanuts next to it...
We're a type 0 now
dont worry kamala will be out of office soon
E=(mass of earth)c^2 = 5.37e+41 J --> 5.37e+41 W --> 5.37e+29 Terawatts for Type I Civilization
Humans currently can produce 15.5 TW of energy (chatgpt estimate lol) = 1.55e+1 TW
Humans need to produce (5.37e+29/1.55e+1) = 3.46e+28 times more than what we currently do to achieve Type I
Your problem is in forgetting the "civilization" part of Kardashev civilization.
You can't stay very "civic" when you have converted all of the mass of your civilization into radiation streaming into the Void.
The K1 level is usually set at the Total Solar irradiance energy level for a Terrestrialish planet, for heat budget reasons.
About 1.73E17 Watts for Earth, or 173,000 TeraWatts.
@ wut? Why can’t humans just devour other xeno-planets and xeno-mass collectively throughout the cosmos until it reaches E=(Mass Earth)c^2 levels of production? I’m just using simple maths bro to set a minimum limit 🤓
lol chatgpt
I absolutely heard: You derp silicon for the N-type layer, then you derp the silicon for the P-type layer, then you splice the derped layers together to build a circuit for current to flow. Derping the layers makes a lot more sense.
15:36 that's the plot of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Great book ❤️
@@TheBarracuda I'm frankly appalled that this book doesn't get talked about more these days.
You forgot one point. Since the kardashev scale is measured in watts, if you collect less energy, but reuse it at higher efficiency, the total amount of energy you need per watt decreases. Therefore you can achieve the 10^17 watts without needing to collect much energyy Energy collection, no matter the source, is just replacing all our energy losses, mainly as heat.
Just....NO.
The Watt is a unit of POWER, which is Energy per Time.
The unit you want for Energy is the Joule.
1 Watt = 1 Joule per Second.
And efficiency can only buy so much time, because even at 100% efficiency, ALL energy becomes heat... The food to run your body, the motion of that maglev commuter train, the computations done in your nifty quantum iSpectacles.
All heat at the end of the day, no matter what the efficiency is.
And if you really want to know something about that train coming down our tunnel, go Grok Jevon's Paradox.
You can’t avoid heat, but efficiency does let you get more out. Consider that Maglev train in a vacuum tube. We use electricity to accelerate it and it gains kinetic energy. Then to decelerate, instead of having friction and turning the kinetic energy into thermal energy, you convert the kinetic energy back into electricity, and for the sake of argument, let’s say 3% of it is turned into heat and 97% is converted back into electricity. Then with the energy you originally collected that could have used to move one maglev train and then convert into heat, you now can move 30 times the amount because you didn’t convert all the energy you originally collected immediately into thermal energy.
Put simply, you can't get more work out of a system than the system has available energy. Energy is exactly defined as available work, in physics. So when the earth acquires 10^17 watts from the sun, that is the maximum total work that ever be performed on Earth due to energy from the sun (we have geothermal and other sources, but as this video points out, that vanishes quickly at these scales). The efficiency is what % of that 10^17 actually gets converted into useable work before eventually radiating away from the earth as heat. All of that 10^17 will eventually radiate away, unless we store it indefinitely or transport it somehow, so that is the energy budget for a K1 civilization.
@@Imagine_Beyond
The efficiency of regenerative braking, for example, is about 65%. Even if you could somehow harvest all the heart back into power, there will still be some max efficiency that is going to be much lower than 96%.
@@kindlin I think you are confusing watts and joules. Energy is in joules and work is in watts. One Joule = one watt * one second. So if you have one joule and want to have more watts, then you could have 2 watts for half a second and still use one joules (2 watts * 0,5 seconds = 1 joule). You could have 10 watts, for 0.1 seconds because 10 watts time 0.1 = 1 joule. Now energy can't be created nor destroyed. Also as entropy hasn't gotton to you and turned your energy into useless heat, you can reuse it. Higher efficiency allows you to reuse it more often before it turns to heat. Then in total you need less joules.
Maybe that's why the Fermi paradox is a thing because it's not where they are but when they were since I guess most don't last long enough before they destroy themselves, yeah?
If there are so many of them, some will survive any extinction event and go on to become K2 which is undestroyable and would be detectable from far away distances.
@@volos_olympushow is K2 undestroyable? Surely another, bigger K2 could have a decent go at it
@@GregorBarclay To destroy a K2 civ you need enough energy to destroy an entire star system. That kind of power is only available to a K3 civilisation which would be even more obvious to any observer within a billion ly.
@@volos_olympus "To destroy a super saiyan 2 you need to go super saiyan 3 first which takes several minutes to power up, plus commercial breaks" - exactly as fictional as K2 and 3 civilizations and claims about them
@@volos_olympus An outburst from the galactic core can sterilize entire regions of the galaxy, so even K2 is not necessarily safe😅. But yeah odds still many million X better than K1.
thanks for 15:10, i was just about to write that problem into the comments 😅
10:52 I love the text change from incoming to ingoing as soon as he said ingoing lol
I believe a truly smart and advanced species knows that the goal is to reach Enough, because More is an ever vanishing reason to await happiness.
I don't think it is possible to reach enough. Every organism is programmed by laws of nature to acquire as much as you can. Thus you either acquire as much as you can or you don't pass your genes in the future. The only way to reach enough is to reprogram that and then not to die somehow.
Not the first time I'm thinking the expansionist merciless alien invaders from our movies would actually be us in the real universe
More has gotten us some pretty sweet stuff so far...
Life, by its very nature, is always expanding. Without that drive, none of the countless species on earth would exist. To not expand is to not be alive.
@christiannorf1680 Not wrong. A species anxieties is often projection and we have plenty of evidence in our history to prove just how nasty we can be.
We're so preoccupied with whether or not we could come up with the energy, but we didn't stop to think what we would even do with it.
AI database centres mostly. They are already building/using nuclear reactors to power single database centres. The power demand is essentially infinite.
@@MyNameIsSalo I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
"Imagine a world where humanity..."
I'm still convinced from that video on why we don't see life elsewhere, where a possibility is that after a certain point, civilizations destroy themselves. Seems like our path.
... or they are all smart enough to ignore us...
The great filter could just as easily be behind us. Perhaps life advancing to technology is extremely difficult. We still don't really know how abiogenesis happened exactly.
It's also possible we're the first and the rate civilizations advanced as us destroy themselves is 0%
@@Alec0124 Too many people seem to think that a technological civilization is inevitable once abiogenesis has happened, and this has always seemed to me to be a pathetically naive way to see things.
It could be inevitable given enough time, but we see plenty in our planet's past to suggest otherwise.
@@Alec0124 Yeah, people really seem to underestimate what a fluke it was a species evolved the kind of intelligence we have, the combination of different traits that all work together to make us social, inquisitve tool-users. Most likely it only happened once in the planet's history. Similarly, multicellular life very possibly was also a fluke, and the baseline in the universe could be simple microbes.
the new merch is incredible
1:51 Warping the Fabric of Space-Time for Fun 😂
NO....we will not achieve Kardashev level 1. It takes a intelligent civilization to achieve this level of expertise. I'm hoping we just don't destroy ourselves. Best Wishes
Holy crap! This guy is 51 years old. Wow!
no way
This show has been going for ten years and Matt's been the host for nine. Man, all you've done is remind me that I've been watching since Gabe and am also now ten years older...thx.
I'd say I hope I look that good at 51 but I already look older lmao
Matt definitely has escape velocity.
Life extension is something far more important than some fixation on mythical energy scales. How does anyone think we can become a "space-faring" species with a handful of decades of lifespan? Laughable.
Great video. What a pre-type 1 civ would have to do politically and economically to advance to type 1 status would make for an interesting part two video. I think such a video would be appropriate because after all politics and economics boils down to resource management of the physical world. So it is suited for scientific analysis.
They never talk about that even though thats the biggest hurdle to human progression
When I was graduating from college, I had to choose what to study.
Existence of Kardashev Scale has led me to study energy engineering.
Plot twist, we master energy production and storage, get out there with enough for a Type 3 society and find out there's absolutely no one out there.
You should do a video on the long-term technological advances necessary for humanity's future survival. I'm talking tech for escaping the sun going supernova, tech for surviving the Andromeda collision, etc. How far into the heat death of the universe can we survive?
As far as I'm aware, the Andromeda collision poses no threat, as the space between the stars is so vast, no actual collisions of stars should occur. It is my understanding that, even if our star gets jostled around in relation to other stars, the planets will maintain the same orbits around the sun. I'm no expert, so I might be missing something.
the sun will not turn into supernova, it's too small for that. He will just turn into a red giant so no need to escape, just relocate to the outer edge of the solar system.
_"They say that if you have a hammer, every problem is a nail."_
This is quote is hitting hard.
"With great power comes great electricity bill."
2:03 Using the numbers for a Kardashev scale of K = [0, 1, 2, 3] = [4e6, 4.36e16, 3.86e26, 5e36]watts (all pulled directly from google), you'll note that each increase in power is almost exactly 10 orders of magnitude. An equation for this is: K = ln(watts)/23 - 1, which with our current output of about 2e13 watts, puts us right at 0.66 on the Kardashev scale. We need to go about 2500x harder to be a full K1.
The kardashev scale seemingly dazing and hypnotic to most as they think how advanced and intelligent an idea it is, has always struck me as the pinnacle of an idea for the hunter gatherer phase of our journey. Basically a bunch of cave men mesmerized by the first fire…little did they know how insignificant naturally occurring forms of energy are. Another point of view is the idea that our energy needs will constantly grow with our progression through consciousness. Very primitive indeed. Best wishes with the rocks you’re smashing together.
Not anymore.
Shakes Magic 8-ball: "Outlook does not look good."
Gmail much better
Same output you'd have got during the civil war or the dark ages or the black death. Yet we're still here doing better than ever.
Knowing if we can, is a great first step
We can not and they KNOW this, but they need clicks and views, and sci-fi rhetoric gets clicks and views.
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
i'm sad geothermal didn't get a mention in this video! also, developing space-based solar in conjunction with deuterium fusion and geothermal would solve some of fusion's scaling problems.
geothermal is especially useful as a fairly robust, low-tech (once the boreholes are dug), continuous, and consistent power source requiring not as much upkeep in the way of maintenance and supply chains as fusion.
space-based solar is also useful for its ability to - if using a phased array - transmit energy wherever its needed, potentially solar-system wide, for powering orbital manufacturing, laser pushers for spacecraft (or asteroid defence), lunar bases, satellites, the list goes on. space-based solar is definitely best accomplished with orbital manufacturing and asteroid capture or mass drivers though, as it overcomes the prohibitive and omnipresent cost of dragging materials out of earth's gravity well (and helps move industry and resource gathering off-world, which is desirable for the same long-term thermodynamics concerns as fusion).
finally there are passive radiative cooling panels either using dialectic thin-films (made from silicon! so taking advantage of the pre-existing solar energy supply chains) or titanium dioxide which passively radiate heat away through the atmospheric transparency window for infrared radiation without any excess energy input (therefore avoiding the pitfall of increasing energy consumption, and therefore waste heat). these would be very effective for mitigating any waste heat from type I energy sources or industrial practices.
We should start by taking care of the planet instead of trashing it for profit. Live within our means.
😂😂😂 who vetted that T-shirt design . Tell me I’m not the only one to see it
👀
I looks like crappy AI designed it.
You see what you want to see!
Yes I mentioned this on a previous video. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
@@jedidiahhenry6020I see balls and shaft. But I did not want to see that.
Honestly, building a moon base and super computer on the far side of the moon seems like a legitimately good idea.
once again Dr Evil has been decades ahead of us.
Why?
@@8BitNaptimeBecause he thinks it's cool. There is currently no benefit.
@@8BitNaptimeThere are a lot of minerals and water on the moon. We could mine them there instead of tearing up the Earth for materials. The far side of the moon would be a great place for a telescope because it always faces away from the Earth and can see things not visible (or not as well) from Earth but without having to be an orbital telescope. And doing large scale production and computation won't heat up the Earth (like he mentions, keeping the heat of the planet in balance). The moon has no atmosphere or biosphere to worry about.
@@toomanymarys7355 I think ponies are cool, yet the universe consistently fails to deliver.
Numbers at this scale are so hard to grasp. Trying to imagine 1 trillion KG of something is 🤯
That equals 1 yourmom.
Imagine 1 KG less than a trillion; now add 1KG to that. Ta dah!
@@DeathlyTired woah
@@SylveonSimp Stop being so annoying, also it's urmom if you want to sound Gen-Z.
@@SylveonSimp Type 1 civilization jokes
Looking forward to the ultimate form of entertainment: Keeping Up With The Kardeshevs
The shirt makes me imagine an alien landing being met with a stampede of humans hellbent on getting out of dodge. XD
Glad to see the comments are low key dissing mr orange
You're glad to see politics infecting a science channel? Talk about obsessed.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn The policies surrounding said orange man is very relevant to the future of science. So no, not obsessed. This is the one time where our current politics makes sense here.
@@KatSpicertthe only thing anti science related I've seen in politics recently is the belief that men can become women
I was just finishing watching an old PBSST video when this notification popped up, great timing 😅
Same.
They've come along a long way from the first episodes. I've learnt so much from this channel and feel really greatful that we have this information taught by a fantastic teacher.
The messy geopolitical stuff is the most important part of ever having a chance at getting to 1 and it seems pretty clear we either aren't getting there or if we do it'll cost such monumental wide spread suffering that one should question if it's even worth it.
We can't in any case. This is juvenile fantasies for stunted teenagers. At our peak, our species managed to send three highly trained people to bounce around on the Moon for a few days, and it took a superpower at its peak to do it. And who really cares? And I speak as someone with a Saturn V model rocket in my bedroom.
From a Soviet scientist's eyes, this probably wasn't even a consideration. Because obviously if there's a human obstacle, the Soviets just removed it...
The fact that doing it would exterminate all life on the planet is the bigger issue.
@@rucker69 the obstacle is capitalism, and they did the best they could to remove it. In order to properly harness the Earth's resources without destroying the environment and ourselves, we must get away from production for a few people's greed and focus on everyone's needs.
@@purpleicewitch6349how laughable you are 😂 It’s so pathetic how you still think socialism is anything even remotely positive, let alone some key to becoming Star Trek.
People like you have commanded THE most violent and destructive regimes the planet has seen, and you think your way is the way forward?
Has PBS ever thought having Mat doing a full scale full documentatry on the scale of documentaries like Through the Wormhole?
I think it would be great
15:05 - That was my concern, as well. Where does all the waste heat go? LOL
I think if we're producing energy on that scale, we would be living in orbital habitats. Or at least, most of us. The Earth could become a nature preserve.
What is the point of a civilization having so much energy generating capacity as to be a type 1, type 2 civilization ? What would that energy be for? I ask because most our economic way of life, even if it were powered cleanly, is centered around consumption and waste. I just don’t know what this future society prioritizes with its energy abundance
What have we done with our energy abundance in comparison to folks in the 1800s? The answer is we can't know.
your demonstrated lack of imagination will doom humanity.
watch the "kurzgesagt" video on "how to win an interstellar war"!
you can do lots with energy - extract and separate resources for production. i agree with you though, we have an inefficiency problem that is way larger than our energy need problem. all the worlds' energy wouldn't be enough if we just keep producing crap & keep concentrating resources for a select few
@@newerstillimproved No, they have a point. Most humans in modern civilizations don't use the excess energy they have in ways that could benefit becoming an intergalactic civilization. We use it primairly to entertain ourselves which not only doesn't help reach this grand goal, but can actually set us back. The current state of US politics is the best example. A huge chunk of people didn't even know that Joe Biden dropped out of the race because corporations have manipulated data to better serve their interests.
@ Your question has a clear answer: we have devastated the ecosystem of our entire planet. In less than 200 years, we have made a geological record of our destruction on a planet with eons of development. In what way is it sane for a single species to require the amount of energy attained by a type 1 civilization? The scale of “civilization” is a paradox: to progress in harnessing all this energy is to inevitably terraform the living planet into an artificial husk, a condition most certainly not compatible with any civilization appropriate for humankind.
Climate change by greenhouse gasses❌️
Climate change by heat waste✅️
Learning how to reverse climate change is just heat management for a Type 1 Civilization basically.
If the Multiverse is real then we are in the really Stupid timeline
Prune the stupid timeline please!!! Lol
Collab with Isaac Arthur when :D
Great vid btw thanks
One thing I think we have to do as well for a kardashev is understand the useability of networks which are high energy cost yet can be run on renewables . These networks allows many different things to be more interconnected with the energy system than physical waste system; however, that is also why they are misunderstood currentily too when the public hears about them because they assume they will only be run on fossil fuels
We're a bit too busy trying to not strangle ourselves with our own ecological umbilical cord at the moment. This seems a bit too far off to even consider.
With great difficulty
Comes great responsibility
The odds are not good.
@@orbislame If responsibility is needed then we're doomed
No it's just categorically impossible:
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
@Beanskiiii I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you though... Or sorry that happened
Not a chance considering recent examples of our stupidity.
Identity politics has been a disaster for the human race. I agree.
@@TheRealityWarper08We counting nationalism with that?
@@TheRealityWarper08 Yes. A White Christian identity packaged and sold with only dog whistle racism will now be the end of us.
@@stormburn1 Nationalism is literally and always has been the root cause of large scale conflicts
@@TheRealityWarper08"identity politics" is just tribalism like always. such a pointless term
I would like to see a longer video on this with more information
I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.
Apparently US solar panel manufacturering increased 4 fold in the last year
Oh nice, looking for the cost to start coming down
@@MarsStarcruiser Global solar module manufacturing costs are around $0.07 / watt. Panels are dirt cheap at the moment.
@@AndyFletcherX31 Glad to hear👍
China is the world's leader in solar panel manufacturing manufacturing
We wont last long enough
Probably by not trying to stick too closely to a pretty much sci-fi concept like civilization levels, as scientific discoveries don't tend to adhere to our imaginations so cleanly. Much like our retro visions of travel, communication, and automatons were very different than modern travel, communications, and robotics.
I'm glad the problem of excessive waste heat was mentioned; it would probably be the main "pollution" which a Type I civilization would have to deal with. I tend to think that most of it would be used in space, because that's where you really need massive amounts of power to move huge spaceships around or accelerate interstellar probes to 99% light speed. But it's a near-certainty that Earth itself would start to feel the burn. I imagine we would need to start lowering the amount of greenhouse gases to even lower points than would occur naturally, so that more infrared is radiated out into space. Or (and I think this may be the best possible future for humanity and Earth), perhaps we eventually move the ENTIRE human population into artificial space habitats and let the whole planet become a nature preserve.
Humanity is at Kardishev 0.72.
Humanity currently uses about 15 terawatts.
Carl Sagan suggested 10,000 terawatts as a standard for Kardishev 1, and formalized the formula as K=(log(P)-6)/10 (where P is power in watts).
(Yes, this is less than the amount of energy that hits the Earth from the Sun. This is meant to be a standard for any planet, not just Earth.)
This means that humanity is at Kardishev 0.72. Carl Sagan himself also stated this estimate for humanity.
If this seems a little high, remember that it is a logarithmic scale, so kardishev 1 is over 600x bigger than kardishev 0.72.
Type-1?? I’m hoping we get through the next 4 years.
We wouldn't have had a chance at all if your candidate won. SpaceX is kinda essential to this process.
@TheRealityWarper08 there are some very smart people working for spacex, but Elmo is not one of them. Offer everyone at spacex a position at a fully funded NASA and they would drop Musk like a bad habit.
Quit making suff up to upset yourself.
@@TheRealityWarper08 He's not the genius you think he is. He is an opportunistic businessman, not the visionary behind the science.
Cringe
Sadly, one of the best fixes to your heat problem is to shade the earth entirely from the sun with...more solar panels. Maybe Mr. Burns was right?
Except it’s not, because you still will have more heat. Energy in = heat no compromise. Even a perfect shade just means we cook in the dark. Like a bit coiner sharing a room with their mining rig.
@@mzaite Nobody says you have to pipe the solar energy back to the planet - you can use it in space.
no problem, you have enough power to run air condition
@@RyanEglitis Then it has to stay in space. Even off planet super computers data streams would be a heat source depending on how much you need it.
Then there's the same issue of getting the heat off the moon or orbital thinking platform. same issue. different smaller scale.
Dude the thumbnail picture is so scary. Can you imagine looking up in the sky at night and not being able to see the stars?
Light pollution drowns out the stars in NYC.. so.. imagine what? 😂😂😂😂
Most people on earth can't see the stars.
Maybe they put giant screens on their backs which mimics what'sv in front of them. That way everyone could see the sky still... Kinda.
The irony is, reaching Type-1 would mean not just harnessing Earth's full energy potential but also moving past divisions in knowledge, resources, and perspective. Until then, I guess we’ll keep working on both science and a bit of science communication. 🌍
Ok I’m 5 mins in and have a question.. if we figure out how to turn all the energy from the sun that hits the earth into electricity wouldn’t we have a heating issue? If we are harnessing solar energy and sending it to earth and some how using it that would be a lot of heat generated on earth… Same thing if we figure out how to make enough energy through nuclear or fusion energy.. your taking about creating as much heat as the earth is bombarded with from the sun… we already have a global warming issue and it seems getting to a type 1 civilization means we’d also need to find a way to shunt heat back into space to keep the globe from cooking to death along the way.
Edit holey crap i wasn’t stupid! It really would be an issue we need to think about!!
easy: "Fortschritt durch Forschung & Frieden"! (progress through science & peace!)
Easy for hypothetical non-humans. When have we ever had peace?
Doesn't Frieden means freedom?
@@oleksandrbyelyenko435 freedom is freiheit!
@@oleksandrbyelyenko435 You are thinking of Freiheit. We need some joy as well - Freude.
I just keep thinking; it would be more effective harnessing unicorn farts for energy.
And you'd be correct. I'll analyze the key proposals from the PBS Spacetime video and evaluate their feasibility across multiple categories. Let me break this down systematically.
1. Space-Based Solar Power Arrays
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Key Challenges:
- Scale: The video mentions needing "hundreds of trillion square kilometers" of solar collectors
- Launch Requirements:
* Current global launch capacity: ~1,000 tons/year to LEO
* Required mass (even with optimistic 10x thickness reduction): "few trillion kilograms"
* At current launch rates, would take millions of years just to launch the materials
- Microwave Power Transmission:
* Power losses during transmission
* Safety concerns with high-power microwave beams
* Never demonstrated at scale
2. Fusion Power Plants
Feasibility Score: 3/5
Analysis:
- Power Requirements: 10^17 Watts (global target)
- Proposed Solution: 5,000-100,000 ITER-scale reactors
- Key Issues:
* Current ITER budget: ~$22 billion for one reactor
* Total cost for 5,000 reactors: ~$110 trillion (current global GDP: ~$100 trillion)
* Tritium supply challenges - breeding requirements
* Neutron damage to reactor materials
* Still unproven technology at scale
3. Global Superconducting Grid
Feasibility Score: 2/5
Challenges:
- Material Requirements:
* Thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconductors
* Rare earth elements needed (yttrium, barium)
* Cooling infrastructure across entire planet
- Maintenance:
* Continuous cooling requirements
* Vulnerability to disruption
* Geopolitical coordination needed
Overall Project Feasibility: 2/5
The Delusional Optimism Problem:
1. Time Horizon Fallacy
- Scientists often ignore the implementation timeline
- Example: Fusion being "50 years away" for the past 50 years
- Fails to account for compounding challenges at scale
2. Resource Availability Assumption
- Assumes unlimited access to rare materials
- Ignores supply chain constraints
- Doesn't account for competing resource demands
3. Economic Handwaving
- Capital costs often minimized or ignored
- Returns on investment not properly calculated
- Opportunity costs not considered
4. Political/Social Oversimplification
- Assumes perfect international cooperation
- Ignores security concerns
- Doesn't address wealth distribution issues
5. Engineering Scale-Up Fallacy
- Assumes linear scaling from lab to global deployment
- Ignores emergent problems at scale
- Underestimates maintenance and replacement needs
6. Environmental Impact Blindness
- Focus on end-state benefits
- Ignores transitional environmental costs
- Doesn't consider full lifecycle impacts
The most striking example of this optimism is the casual mention of "a few trillion kilograms" of materials needed for solar arrays as if this were a minor detail. For comparison, this mass is equivalent to thousands of years of current global manufacturing output.
This type of scientific optimism often stems from:
1. Career incentives (funding requires optimism)
2. Specialization blindness (experts in one field may miss challenges in others)
3. Solution-oriented mindset that downplays obstacles
4. Desire to inspire public interest
5. Focus on technical possibility rather than practical feasibility
Real progress toward a Type I civilization would require:
1. Revolutionary advances in multiple fields simultaneously
2. Unprecedented global cooperation
3. Massive resource reallocation
4. Centuries of sustained effort
5. Solutions to problems we haven't yet discovered
While pushing boundaries and maintaining optimism is important for scientific progress, the level of oversimplification in these proposals borders on misleading. A more honest approach would acknowledge the enormous challenges while still working toward incremental progress.