Overtime, this page will be updated as more questions are asked
There are many things found throughout my articles that many people, especially people unfamiliar with math or astronomy might have trouble understanding. This is no problem, as this page will help people understand more.
1.0 Exponential numbers – example: 10^6, 10^8, 10^12
any time you see these numbers, it’s an exponential number, meaning 10 to the power of anything. The little upwards arrow indicates that the number is exponential.
10^6 means a one followed by 6 zeroes, which is also ten to the power of 6, which is one million
10^6 – 1,000,000
10^8 is a one followed by 8 zeroes, which is also ten to the power of 8 – which is one hundred million – 100,000,000
10^9 – one billion – 1,000,000,000
10^10 – ten billion – 10,000,000,000
10^15 – one quadrillion – 1,000,000,000,000,000
and so on…
And then you’ll see numbers like: 3.5 x 10^9, which would be 3.5 billion in exponential form – 3,500,000,000. this also means 3.5 times ten to the power of 9 (like pemdas, exponential is always calculated first, and then multiplication.
1.1 What’s the point of these numbers?
The majority of articles will be about astronomy, and technology that’s typically related to astronomy. If you didn’t know, the universe is absolutely massive – distances, sizes of bodies, etc. so we need to shorten these numbers by using the exponential form.
2.0 Kardashev scale
The kardashev scale is a scale that is used to measure how advanced and powerful a civilization is. It is measured by how many watts a civilization consumes at any given moment.
For example, humanity, as of 2024, is at type 0.72
(calculator for kardashev scale)
(calculator for our level)
The kardashev scale is logarithmic, meaning every whole number on the scale is a massive multiplication increase of the previous one. Check this example:
Our civilization as of 2024 is consuming 1.8 x 10^13, or 18 trillion watts continuously. After using the calculation above, that places us at 0.72 on the kardashev scale.
However, a type one civilization is exponentially larger larger than ours, despite a 0.28 increase on the scale. A type one civilization continuously consumes 10^16 watts. or ten quadrillion watts. Thats 555 times more powerful than our civilization.
So imagine a civilization thats 555 times more powerful than ours, just think of the potential technology, research, innovation, way of life, etc.
Now, a type 2.0 civilization consumes 10^26 watts continuously, which is about ten billion times more than a type 1.0 civilization – multiply 10^16 by ten billion to get to 10^26.
A type 3.0 civilization is ten billion times more powerful than a type 2.0 civilization – running at 10^36 watts continuously. Yes, that’s right, that’s a one followed by 36 zeroes, a very large number that would be unnecessary to write out as a whole.
So to summarize, each whole number is a ten billion times increase than the previous number.
2.1 What can each civilization do?
A type 1.0 civilization can utilize all the available energy on their home planet. This means that they could have things like medicine to slow aging, hence increasing life expectancy. There could be faster and more efficient transport, going from one side of Earth to the other in just maybe a couple hours or less. They could also manipulate natural disasters to their advantage.
A type 2.0 civilization can harness all the energy emitted from their star, typically through a megastructure called a Dyson Sphere. They could typically have spaceships available to each citizen regardless of class. They could also terraform several Solar System planets, and space travel would be a typical daily for everyone. As a type 2 civilization further advances, they could begin research on interstellar travel.
A type 3.0 civilization can harness all available energy in their entire galaxy. This means that millions of Dyson Spheres are present in the galaxy. Interstellar travel has been mastered, and the civilization typically uses wormholes or warp drives to get from one side of the galaxy to the other in a short period of time. The available technology would be unfathomable to modern day humans.
3.0 Light-year
A light-year, despite having the world “year” is actually a unit of length/distance. It measures the distance light travels in one year.
light travels at 186,282 miles per second! (299,792 km per second)
After one year, light will cover a distance of 5.8 trillion miles, or about 9.4 trillion kilometers. Light-years are used to measure distances between stars, and galaxies, as traditional miles and kilometers would be too large to use. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.24 light-years away. The center of the Milky Way is 25,000 light-years away.
4.0 Astronomical unit (AU)
An astronomical unit, or AU for short, is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun – which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million km. It’s called average because Earth’s orbit around the Sun isn’t a perfect circle, this means throughout the year, Earth gets slightly closer to, and further from the Sun. Astronomers determined the average distance which is about 93 million miles.
Astronomical units are used to measure distances between objects in the Solar System, because distances can exceed hundreds of millions to billions of miles.
Conclusion
Over time, this page will be updated as more topics are mentioned or published.