In modern times, advanced space technology has narrowed the distance between human beings and the starry sky, and the vast galaxy, which was originally far away, has become close at hand.
In this case, a long-standing question has been raised: Is there any other intelligent life in the vast universe? In order to solve the doubts in my heart, a mighty exploration plan began.
However, the reality is always skinny, and the long search has yielded nothing. In the vast universe, it seems that only humans are screaming at the top of their lungs.
Of course, this cold reality has not changed the confidence and determination of human beings to find intelligent life outside the earth. After all, human beings seem to be newborn babies to the universe, so it is too "immature" to find a way or time.
Although we haven't really discovered alien civilizations, it doesn't prevent us from imagining their developed degree. Combining the current level of human development and the foreseeable future, some scientists have put forward a point: a super civilization that has developed for 1 100 million years must have three skills:
First, the ability to mine metals from the parent star. In the era of rapid development, we all know that what is lacking most is not high-rise buildings, but "talents" who can promote civilization and progress.
But do you know what will be scarce in the next few hundred or even thousands of years? In fact, many scientists and science fiction writers have given the answer to the question-metal.
Looking back on the development of mankind in the past 10 thousand years, we can find that in the early days, in order to obtain the land, population, food and other resources needed for development, war was almost the only solution.
With the continuous development of civilization and science and technology, human beings have gradually realized that natural resources are the main foundation of development, and oil, coal and natural gas have become the main targets of war.
This raises a thought-provoking question: If controlled nuclear fusion and other more efficient and environmentally friendly energy sources are commercialized in the future, natural resources that have great damage to the environment, such as coal and oil, will definitely be eliminated.
Without the competition for energy resources, does it mean that "world peace" will no longer be a pale slogan, but a description of the current world situation? The answer is definitely no, because after not robbing oil, there will be something new that must be robbed-metal.
For human beings, metal is an indispensable thing, and the provider of this kind of thing is not the earth, but various cosmic events.
From the periodic table of elements, we can know that the lower the ranking, the rarer the elements are. The "rarity" here not only represents its less reserves, but also represents the difficulty of obtaining them.
Take the gold element that everyone likes as an example. In fact, gold is very rare in the whole universe, because the conditions under which it is produced are very harsh, and only when a star explodes will some be produced.
Perhaps many people don't know that with the continuous advancement of industrial process, the demand for metal elements ranked lower is increasing. For example, the serial numbers of elements needed to manufacture ordinary metal products are mostly 20-60, while the serial numbers of elements used in nuclear energy research are between 92-94.
From books, we know that metals are non-renewable resources, that is, they are used less. Once humans run out of metals stored on the earth, they will only be able to mine on other planets or asteroids.
Therefore, super civilization must have the ability to exploit the resources on various planets. On the other hand, if they don't have this ability, they can't become super civilization at all.
It is worth mentioning that mankind has begun the first step of collecting extraterrestrial resources. In the past few days, Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has successfully thrown the samples obtained from the Dragon Palace back to Earth.
Second, the ability to use the energy of stars. How to judge the developed degree of a civilization in the universe? Is it to see how many tall buildings they have built, or how much they have transformed their home planet? Of course not. In fact, it mainly depends on the energy levels they use.
According to "Calda's Soff Index", there are three levels of cosmic civilization, the most powerful of which is the third-level civilization that can directly collect the energy of stars, which is what we understand as "super civilization".
How to directly collect and utilize the energy of stars? Freeman Dyson, a physicist, has put forward the idea of making a structure that almost completely covers the stars. This structure is often called "dyson sphere".
Perhaps many people are curious: When people have mastered controlled nuclear fusion thoroughly, do they really need to build a huge "dyson sphere"? Isn't it a little tasteless?
In fact, it's not chicken ribs at all, because the energy generated by controlled nuclear fusion is not on the same order of magnitude as the energy collected by dyson sphere. And great energy is also the foundation and guarantee for human life and getting out of the earth.
Third, the ability to spread genes over a long distance. For a super civilization, it is not enough to exploit materials across planets and use the energy of stars to build large-scale space equipment.
On the cosmic scale, everything is not eternal, and the crisis leading to the demise of civilization may occur at any time. Therefore, in this case and under the premise, it is absolutely one of the necessary skills of super civilization to be able to spread the fire of civilization and racial genes in the universe.
And if the long-distance transmission of civilization and genes is really the necessary ability of super civilization, then a very terrible question arises: is the origin of human beings related to this ability? Or will mankind become a fire of hope inadvertently left by a super civilization? The answer may subvert cognition.
Generally speaking, human imagination of super civilization is actually based on human itself and the current level of science and technology, and different environments in the universe may create different species and different development paths.
So, I'm afraid we can only know what the super civilization that has existed for 100 million years or even billions of years is and what its desirable ability is, and this day should not be far away.