Let me first talk about how long the history of human science and technology is.
The history of mankind began with apes and has been around for millions of years. Archaeology, biology, and genetics research believe that human ancestors and chimpanzee ancestors parted ways from about 8 million years ago, and were reluctant to be stupid animals, and became “higher primates walking upright on two legs.” The latest discovery of archaeology is that in 2000, in the Tugen Mountain area of Kenya, Africa, the fossils of primitive people (earth root species) dating back 6 million years were found, commonly known as millennials. This is the earliest ape-man fossil found so far.
The history of human science and technology development is very slow. The reason why apes are counted as human ancestors is to learn to use fire and simple tools. People call this era the Stone Age. The Stone Age is a long one, going through the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and other stages, and it has gone through millions of years. Modern research generally starts from 2.5 million years ago and ends 10,000 years ago.
After the end of the Neolithic Age, mankind entered the primitive farming era. The study of Chinese historiography divides the history after the Neolithic Age into ancient history, ancient history, modern history, and modern history. The ancient history belongs to the period of myths and legends. my country’s Pangu opened the world, Nuwa created human beings, and the three emperors and five emperors belong to this period; ancient history has been around 5000 years from Xia, Shang and Zhou to Yuan, Ming and Qing; and modern history is from the Opium War in 1840. In the beginning, the establishment of New China; modern history refers to the period from 1949 to today.
The development of human civilization as a whole shows a gradual acceleration trend.
From the above historical development context, we can see that the progress of human civilization as a whole began to be very slow. It took millions of years for the Stone Age, tens of thousands of years for primitive farming, and thousands of years for the agricultural era. Even after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the farming method of “the day of hoeing the crops and the sweat dripping into the soil” continued for a long time; and it was not long for the era when it truly began to use the laws of nature to transform the world into a brighter world.
According to the history of China’s science and technology development, the germination of modern science, which is truly guided by scientific theories and mathematics, physics and chemistry, began in modern times. The most notable sign is the Westernization Movement initiated by enlightened people in the Qing Dynasty in 1860. Through limited reform and opening up, some of the world’s advanced science and technology and machine manufacturing technology were introduced, allowing China to enter the machine age from the farming era.
The modern science of the world started much earlier than China. The more prominent changes can be traced back to the 16th century in the era of Copernicus. It was he who discovered the heliocentric theory, which shook the geocentric theory, which had ruled for more than a thousand years, and shook the religious Trinity God. Creation theory. Since then, a large number of scientific pioneers such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton invented modern scientific instruments such as telescopes, and scientific theories such as mechanics, optics, and mathematics were established and developed. In the future, scientific research began to truly move towards experimental verification, with quantitative analysis as the main scientific method, and the era of replacing natural science with philosophical thinking based on imagination and reasoning is over.
This is 500 years ago. Therefore, it can be said that mankind has only 500 years of history in the era of science and technology.
Human beings have entered the era of light from darkness, but the level of civilization is still very low.
Since then, Darwin, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, Madame Curie, Einstein, Planck and other scientific masters have followed one after another. Under their theoretical guidance, human civilization has developed faster and faster: in the 17th century, mankind entered The machine age powered by steam engines; the 19th century entered the electrical age; the 20th century entered the nuclear energy era, and soon entered the computer-centric information age; after entering the 21st century, communication technology, quantum technology, cosmological research, genetics , Aerospace science and technology are developing rapidly, and they are changing with each passing day.
Human beings have entered the era of mechanization, electrification and automation from the era of ignorance and darkness and heavy manual labor. It can be said that since the beginning of this century, the progress of human science and technology civilization has entered an exponentially ascending high-speed path. But it can be said that the development of human science and technology is close to the limit, and it is the end? In fact, it’s still early. The current level of human science and technology has not even reached the elementary level.
Why do you say that? This is because our current technology is changing with each passing day. It’s just that we compare ourselves with our past. The past development was too slow, and now we have entered the fast lane, of course it seems to be much faster. But how capable are humans currently? The power of human beings in the universe is still very small, and even the earth on which they depend for survival cannot be dealt with.
A large tsunami or a major earthquake will cause humanity to suffer heavy losses and cannot afford to walk around. If global climate change, major changes in the crustal tectonic plates, global volcanic eruptions and other huge disasters occur, humans may be extinct. All of this is because humanity’s current scientific and technological civilization capabilities are still very weak.
So does mankind have the ability to overcome the greatest disaster on the planet? Of course, as long as we give mankind enough time for development, human civilization will be greatly improved, not only able to defeat and control the earth, but also to control the solar system and even the Milky Way. This is the so-called theory of the three-level civilization of the universe.
A measure of the three-level civilization of the universe.
This theory was created by former Soviet scientist Kardashev in the 1960s. After the theory came out, although there have been controversies in the scientific community, it has been recognized by most scientists, especially researchers looking for extraterrestrial civilization and the development trend of human civilization in the future. This theory divides cosmic civilization into three levels. The first level is planetary civilization, which is the lowest level civilization; the second level is stellar civilization, which is a medium level civilization; and the third level is galaxy level civilization, which is a high level. civilization.
The criteria for dividing these three civilizations are based on the energy of the galaxy and stars in which they are located, and the ability of the civilization to control how much energy is used for interstellar communication in the universe. When the energy used by the control reaches the total amount that the stars radiate to the planet where the civilization is located, the first-class civilization is realized; when the energy used by the control reaches the sum of the energy emitted by the stars of the same class, the second-class civilization is realized; the sum of the energy used by the control reaches When the energy of this level galaxy is summed up, the third level of civilization is realized.
As a human being, it is based on the energy radiated by the sun and the total energy radiated by the Milky Way. The total radiant energy of the sun is about 3.78*10^26J/s (Joule/sec); the energy radiated by the sun to the earth is 1/2.2 billionth of the total solar radiation, which is about 1.72*10^17J/s; The total energy radiation is about 200 billion times that of the sun, which is 7.56*10^37J/s.
The level that human civilization has reached now.
According to the “World Energy Statistical Yearbook 2020” released by BP (British Petroleum), the world’s total power generation in 2019 reached 27 trillion kWh, each kWh is equivalent to 3,600,000J, and the total energy provided by the annual power generation is equivalent to 9.72*10^ 19J. If this total amount is converted into energy per second, it is only about 3.1*10^12J/s, which is only 0.0018% of the control energy requirement of the first level civilization, and it has not even reached the level 0.1 civilization.
Moreover, only a small part of the total amount of electricity generated is used for cosmic interstellar communication. Therefore, if measured according to the standards of Kardashev’s three-level civilization, we know how low-level human civilization is, right? However, the scientific community has long believed that human energy consumption has reached 2*10^13J/s, reaching a level of 0.73 civilization. This probably counts the energy used by humans to eat, drink, burn wood, burn coal, burn oil, and burn gas. .
But in any case, human civilization is still at a very low level. According to this civilization upgrade requirement, the energy demand for civilization index upgrade is an order of magnitude increase. For every 0.1 index of civilization upgrade, energy must increase by an order of magnitude, that is, 10 times. This has always been superimposed. To reach the first level civilization, the total amount of energy used by humans must be increased by thousands of times on the current basis; to reach the second level civilization, it is necessary to increase the energy control use more than 10 billion times in the first level civilization.
The main bottleneck for the upgrading of human civilization is energy.
Judging from the above-mentioned civilization upgrade standards, the demand for energy is increasing exponentially. In this way, human beings cannot reach the first-class civilization by relying on fossil fuels. Only by developing controllable nuclear fusion and using the heavy hydrogen in the seawater for human power generation, can it be possible to realize the first-level civilization of mankind; and to achieve the second-level civilization, even if all the deuterium in the seawater is squeezed out, it will not be so huge. Energy, therefore, can only meet the energy demand by wrapping the sun and using all the solar energy for its own use. This is the origin of the Dyson ball.
Three-level civilization theory, Dyson sphere theory, these several civilization upgrade theories are linked together. Some people sneered at the Dyson ball theory, thinking it was nonsense. However, the upgrading of human civilization requires such a huge amount of energy, which cannot be achieved without Dyson Ball. This is also the basis used by scientists when searching for extraterrestrial civilizations. If there are civilizations that reach the level of secondary civilization in the universe, the local star system will be transformed and the Dyson sphere will be built to wrap the stars, so that we can observe the stellar light changes there. abnormal.
Unfortunately, so far, astronomers have scanned millions of surrounding stars. Although several suspected Dyson spheres have been discovered, they have not been confirmed or denied later, which means that there is no reliable evidence that we see the universe. There are secondary civilizations.
Through these analyses, do you still think that human technology has reached its limit? I can only say that human science and technology civilization has only just started, and the road ahead is still very long. It is necessary to achieve one after another theoretical breakthroughs in order to continuously upgrade human science and technology civilization.
The future of human civilization is very long, as long as it is not destroyed, there is hope.
Some scientists predict that it will take 200 years for human beings to reach the first-class civilization; it will take 5,000 years to reach the second-class civilization; what about the third-class civilization? It is still unpredictable, but it is generally believed that it will take at least 100 million years or even hundreds of millions of years.
The biggest question now is, can human civilization last for so long? Maybe a few hundred years, maybe a few thousand years, will mankind be destroyed and extinct by natural and man-made disasters? No one knows now. But the consensus of the scientific community is that the longer the development of human civilization, the stronger the ability to withstand disasters, and the possibility of extinction will decrease exponentially.
At the level of civilization, mankind will no longer be afraid of natural disasters and man-made disasters from the earth, and can fully control our homeland; at the level of civilization, mankind will no longer be afraid of natural disasters from the solar system, and the sun will become a small world controlled by mankind; After reaching the third level of civilization, mankind will no longer be afraid of almost any cosmic disaster. Only the destruction of the universe or the death of consciousness can exterminate mankind.
Whether mankind can achieve the upgrade of civilization, the key is that the various disasters encountered in the next few hundred years can be within the scope of mankind and will not be extinct. This is a long-term problem, a problem for the future, and a problem for all generations of mankind. However, mankind must start from now on and work hard from generation to generation. First of all, if you don’t die yourself, you will not die soon. All countries must abandon their private thoughts, unite and cooperate, and develop scientifically, so that human blood can last longer.
