Kardashev Types

The Kardashev types are three classes of technological civilization ranked by the power each commands, proposed by the Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in his 1964 paper “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations.” A Type I civilization uses energy on the scale of its home planet, a Type II captures the output of its star, and a Type III harnesses the luminosity of an entire galaxy. The English word “type” descends from the Greek typos, the impression left by a blow and hence a pattern or model, the term Paul used when he called Adam “the figure of him that was to come” (Romans 5:14). Popular treatments present the scale as a ladder of inevitable progress, yet Kardashev devised it to estimate which civilizations might be heard across interstellar distances.

Kardashev’s Scale and Sagan’s Interpolation

Writing at the dawn of the radio search for other civilizations, Kardashev reasoned that only a society commanding enormous power could transmit signals detectable across the galaxy. He pegged Type I at about 4 × 10^19 ergs per second, roughly four trillion watts, a level close to humanity’s total consumption at the time. Type II stood at about 4 × 10^33 ergs per second, the full radiance of a sun-like star, and Type III at about 4 × 10^44, the light of a galaxy, so that each step multiplies the one before by some ten billion. Kardashev also proposed that the radio source CTA-102 might be an artificial beacon, a suggestion that drew international attention before astronomers identified the object as a quasar.

Carl Sagan made the scale continuous in The Cosmic Connection (1973). His interpolation formula, K = (log₁₀ P − 6) / 10, with P the power in watts, sets Type I at ten quadrillion watts, and by that measure Sagan placed his own civilization at about 0.7. A global consumption near twenty trillion watts now yields roughly 0.73. Sagan also proposed a second axis, lettered A through Z, that ranks civilizations by the information they possess, since a society might command great power with little knowledge or great knowledge with modest power. That neglected axis anticipates the scriptures’ insistent concern with what a civilization knows and to what ends it turns its power.

The Governing Ones

Abraham’s vision presents an ordered cosmos that strikingly anticipates Kardashev’s ladder. The patriarch “saw the stars, that they were very great,” and the Lord named Kolob chief among “the governing ones,” set “to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest” (Abraham 3:2-3). The vision then states its principle: “If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them; therefore Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen, because it is nearest unto me” (Abraham 3:16). It is significant that the revelation measures greatness by nearness to God, joining a hierarchy of governing power to a hierarchy of proximity to the divine presence.

The revelation Joseph Smith called the olive leaf identifies the energy of the heavens with the power of God Himself. The light of sun, moon, and stars “proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space⁠— The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne” (D&C 88:12-13). Kardashev’s scale and this revelation thus measure the same quantity, the radiant power of the stars. Kardashev treats that radiance as a resource awaiting capture, whereas the revelation treats it as the medium of divine government, so that a civilization drawing upon a star draws upon the light by which God sustains all things.

Dyson Spheres and the Silent Sky

Freeman Dyson proposed in 1960 that a civilization outgrowing its planet would surround its star with orbiting collectors, and that such a structure would betray itself by glowing in the infrared. The Dyson sphere became the emblem of Type II, and astronomers have searched for its signature. Jason Wright’s team at Penn State examined about 100,000 galaxies in 2015 and found none bearing an obvious mark of a Type III civilization, while Project Hephaistos in 2024 narrowed some five million stars to seven candidates, all small red dwarfs, whose infrared excess may yet prove to be dust. The revelations nonetheless affirm a populous cosmos: “there are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom” (D&C 88:37).

Isaiah summoned Israel to look upward: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth” (Isaiah 40:26). The prophet attributes to God the power Kardashev assigns to his highest types, and he joins that power to intimate knowledge, since the One who commands the stars also calls each by name. Lincoln Cannon’s New God Argument reasons that if humanity can become posthuman, more powerful posthumans probably already exist, and that they are probably more benevolent than we are, since civilizations whose destructive capacity outpaced their compassion would have destroyed themselves.

Power and the Character of Civilizations

The scale’s chief limitation lies in what it declines to measure. It ranks a civilization by the watts it commands and says nothing of how those watts are spent, whether on healing or on weapons. John D. Barrow proposed a complementary scale of mastery over ever smaller dimensions, and others have suggested weighting efficiency. Furthermore, the Restoration supplies a measure the scale lacks. Joseph Smith’s vision of celestial glory, describing those who overcome by faith and receive the Father’s fulness, declares that God “makes them equal in power, and in might, and in dominion” (D&C 76:95). The Father shares His power with those whose character has been conformed to His own.

The Kardashev types rank civilizations by the light they gather, and the scriptures enlarge that measure by asking whose light it is and how near its users stand to its source. Read beside Paul, the English word acquires a second sense, for each type is a figure of the one above it, and all are figures of the power of God. Mormon transhumanists find in the ladder a plausible outline of how God’s children might grow toward the power the Father shares. The same ladder traces the means by which a civilization lacking compassion could ruin worlds, and a humanity at 0.73 already turns its energy readily to destruction. Its ascent will follow the pattern of Abraham’s heavens only as its nearness to God increases with its power.