Hyperspace (46 page)

The lesson from analyzing the historical energy needs of humanity shows graphically how for only 0.01% of our existence we have manipulated energy levels beyond that of animals. Yet within just a few centuries, we have unleashed vast amounts of energy via the electromagnetic and nuclear forces. Let us now leave the past and begin a discussion of the future, using the same methodology, to understand the point at which we may harness the superforce.

Futurology, or the prediction of the future from reasonable scientific judgments, is a risky science. Some would not even call it a science at all, but something that more resembles hocus pocus or witchcraft. Futurology has deservedly earned this unsavory reputation because every “scientific” poll conducted by futurologists about the next decade has
proved to be wildly off the mark. What makes futurology such a primitive science is that our brains think linearly, while knowledge progresses exponentially. For example, polls of futurologists have shown that they take known technology and simply double or triple it to predict the future. Polls taken in the 1920s showed that futurologists predicted that we would have, within a few decades, huge fleets of blimps taking passengers across the Atlantic.

But science also develops in unexpected ways. In the short run, when extrapolating within a few years, it is a safe bet that science will progress through steady, quantitative improvements on existing technology. However, when extrapolating over a few decades, we find that qualitative breakthroughs in new areas become the dominant factor, where new industries open up in unexpected places.

Perhaps the most famous example of futurology gone wrong is the predictions made by John von Neumann, the father of the modern electronic computer and one of the great mathematicians of the century. After the war, he made two predictions: first, that in the future computers would become so monstrous and costly that only large governments would be able to afford them, and second, that computers would be able to predict the weather accurately.

In reality, the growth of computers went in precisely the opposite direction: We are flooded with inexpensive, miniature computers that can fit in the palm of our hands. Computer chips have become so cheap and plentiful that they are an integral part of some modern appliances. Already, we have the “smart” typewriter (the word processor), and eventually we will have the “smart” vacuum cleaner, the “smart” kitchen, the “smart” television, and the like. Also, computers, no matter how powerful, have failed to predict the weather. Although the classical motion of individual molecules can, in principle, be predicted, the weather is so complex that even someone sneezing can create distortions that will ripple and be magnified across thousands of miles, eventually, perhaps, unleashing a hurricane.

With all these important caveats, let us determine when a civilization (either our own or one in outer space) may attain the ability to master the tenth dimension. Astronomer Nikolai Kardashev of the former Soviet Union once categorized future civilizations in the following way.

A Type I civilization is one that controls the energy resources of an entire planet. This civilization can control the weather, prevent earthquakes, mine deep in the earth’s crust, and harvest the oceans. This civilization has already completed the exploration of its solar system.

A Type II civilization is one that controls the power of the sun itself.
This does not mean passively harnessing solar energy; this civilization mines the sun. The energy needs of this civilization are so large that it directly consumes the power of the sun to drive its machines. This civilization will begin the colonization of local star systems.

A Type III civilization is one that controls the power of an entire galaxy. For a power source, it harnesses the power of billions of star systems. It has probably mastered Einstein’s equations and can manipulate space-time at will.

The basis of this classification is rather simple: Each level is categorized on the basis of the power source that energizes the civilization. Type I civilizations use the power of an entire planet. Type II civilizations use the power of an entire star. Type III civilizations use the power of an entire galaxy. This classification ignores any predictions concerning the detailed nature of future civilizations (which are bound to be wrong) and instead focuses on aspects that can be reasonably understood by the laws of physics, such as energy supply.

Our civilization, by contrast, can be categorized as a Type 0 civilization, one that is just beginning to tap planetary resources, but does not have the technology and resources to control them. A Type 0 civilization like ours derives its energy from fossil fuels like oil and coal and, in much of the Third World, from raw human labor. Our largest computers cannot even predict the weather, let alone control it. Viewed from this larger perspective, we as a civilization are like a newborn infant.

Although one might guess that the slow march from a Type 0 civilization to a Type III civilization might take millions of years, the extraordinary fact about this classification scheme is that this climb is an exponential one and hence proceeds much faster than anything we can readily conceive.

With all these qualifications, we can still make educated guesses about when our civilization will reach these milestones. Given the rate at which our civilization is growing, we might expect to reach Type I status within a few centuries.

For example, the largest energy source available to our Type 0 civilization is the hydrogen bomb. Our technology is so primitive that we can unleash the power of hydrogen fusion only by detonating a bomb, rather than controlling it in a power generator. However, a simple hurricane generates the power of hundreds of hydrogen bombs. Thus weather control, which is one feature of Type I civilizations, is at least a century away from today’s technology.

Similarly, a Type I civilization has already colonized most of its solar system. By contrast, milestones in today’s development of space travel
are painfully measured on the scale of decades, and therefore qualitative leaps such as space colonization must be measured in centuries. For example, the earliest date for NASA’s manned landing on the planet Mars is 2020. Therefore, the colonization of Mars may take place 40 to 50 years after that, and the colonization of the solar system within a century.

By contrast, the transition from a Type I to a Type II civilization may take only 1,000 years. Given the exponential growth of civilization, we may expect that within 1,000 years the energy needs of a civilization will become so large that it must begin to mine the sun to energize its machines.

A typical example of a Type II civilization is the Federation of Planets portrayed in the “Star Trek” series. This civilization has just begun to master the gravitational force—that is, the art of warping space-time via wormholes—and hence, for the first time, has the capability of reaching nearby stars. It has evaded the limit placed by the speed of light by mastering Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Small colonies have been established on some of these systems, which the starship
Enterprise
is sworn to protect. The civilization’s starships are powered by the collision of matter and antimatter. The ability to create large concentrations of antimatter suitable for space travel places that civilization many centuries to a millennium away from ours.

Advancing to a Type III civilization may take several thousand years or more. This is, in fact, the time scale predicted by Isaac Asimov in his classic Foundation Series, which describes the rise, fall, and re-emergence of a galactic civilization. The time scale involved in each of these transitions involves thousands of years. This civilization has harnessed the energy source contained within the galaxy itself. To it, warp drive, instead of being an exotic form of travel to the nearby stars, is the standard means of trade and commerce between sectors of the galaxy. Thus although it took 2 million years for our species to leave the safety of the forests and build a modern civilization, it may take only thousands of years to leave the safety of our solar system and build a galactic civilization.

One option open to a Type III civilization is harnessing the power of supernovae or black holes. Its starships may even be able to probe the galactic nucleus, which is perhaps the most mysterious of all energy sources. Astrophysicists have theorized that because of the enormous size of the galactic nucleus, the center of our galaxy may contain millions of black holes. If true, this would provide virtually unlimited amounts of energy.

At this point, manipulating energies a million billion times larger than present-day energies should be possible. Thus for a Type III civilization, with the energy output of uncountable star systems and perhaps the galactic nucleus at its disposal, the mastery of the tenth dimension becomes a real possibility.

I once had lunch with physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study. Dyson is a senior figure in the world of physics who has tackled some of the most intellectually challenging and intriguing questions facing humanity, such as new directions in space exploration, the nature of extraterrestrial life, and the future of civilization.

Unlike other physicists, who dwell excessively in narrow, well-defined areas of specialization, Dyson’s fertile imagination has roamed across the galaxy. “I cannot, as Bohr and Feynman did, sit for years with my whole mind concentrated upon one deep question. I am interested in too many different directions,” he confessed.
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Thin, remarkably spry, with the owlish expression of an Oxford don, and speaking with a trace of his British accent, he engaged in a long, wide-ranging lunch conversation with me, touching on many of the ideas that have fascinated him over the years.

Viewing the transition of our civilization to Type I status, Dyson finds that our primitive space program is headed in the wrong direction. The current trend is toward heavier payloads and greater lag time between space shots, which is severely retarding the exploration of space. In his writings, he has proposed a radical departure from this trend, based on what he calls the
Astrochicken
.

Small, lightweight, and intelligent, Astrochicken is a versatile space probe that has a clear advantage over the bulky, exorbitantly expensive space missions of the past, which have been a bottleneck to space exploration. “Astrochicken will weight a kilogram instead of Voyager’s ton,” he claims. “Astrochicken will not be built, it will be grown,” he adds. “Astrochicken could be as agile as a hummingbird with a brain weighing no more than a gram.”
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It will be part machine and part animal, using the most advanced developments in bioengineering. It will be small but powerful enough to explore the outer planets, such as Uranus and Neptune. It will not need huge quantities of rocket fuel; it will be bred and programmed to “eat” ice and hydrocarbons found in the rings surrounding the outer
planet. Its genetically engineered stomach will then digest these materials into chemical fuel. Once its appetite has been satisfied, it will then rocket to the next moon or planet.

Astrochicken depends on technological breakthroughs in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and solar-electric propulsion. Given the remarkable progress in these ares, Dyson expects that the various technologies for Astrochicken may be available by the year 2016.

Taking the larger view of the development of civilization, Dyson also believes that, at the current rate of development, we may attain Type I status within a few centuries. He does not believe that making the transition between the various types of civilizations will be very difficult. He estimates that the difference in size and power separating the various types of civilizations is roughly a factor of 10 billion. Although this may seem like a large number, a civilization growing at the sluggish rate of 1 percent per year can expect to make the transition between the various civilizations within 2,500 years. Thus it is almost guaranteed that a civilization can steadily progress toward Type III status.

Dyson has written, “A society which happens to possess a strong expansionist drive will expand its habitat from a single planet (Type I) to a biosphere exploiting an entire star (Type II) within a few thousand years, and from a single star to an entire galaxy (Type III) within a few million years. A species which has once passed beyond Type II status is invulnerable to extinction by even the worst imaginable natural or artificial catastrophe.”
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However, there is one problem. Dyson has concluded that the transition from a Type II to a Type III civilization may pose formidable physical difficulties, due mainly to the limitation imposed by the speed of light. The expansion of a Type II civilization will necessarily proceed at less than the speed of light, which he feel places a severe restriction on its development.

Will a Type II civilization break the light barrier and the bonds of special relativity by exploring the power of hyperspace? Dyson is not sure. Nothing can be ruled out, but the Planck length, he reminded me, is a fantastically small distance, and the energies required to probe down to that distance are unimaginable. Perhaps, he mused, the Planck length is a natural barrier facing all civilizations.

If the long journey to reach Type III status seems remote for our own civilization, perhaps one day we will meet an extraterrestrial civilization
that has already harnessed hyperspace for its needs and is willing to share its technology with us. The puzzle facing us, however, is that we do not see signs of any advanced civilization in the heavens, at least not in our solar system or even in our small sector of the galaxy. Our space probes, especially the
Viking
landing on Mars in the 1970s and the
Voyager
missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in the 1980s, have sent back discouraging information concerning the bleak, lifeless nature of our solar system.