<Li> The emissions from quasars can be readily compared to those of small active galaxies and could provide a massive power source if collectable . </Li> <P> There are many historical examples of human civilization undergoing large - scale transitions, such as the Industrial Revolution . The transition between Kardashev scale levels could potentially represent similarly dramatic periods of social upheaval, since they entail surpassing the hard limits of the resources available in a civilization's existing territory . A common speculation suggests that the transition from Type 0 to Type I might carry a strong risk of self - destruction since, in some scenarios, there would no longer be room for further expansion on the civilization's home planet, as in a Malthusian catastrophe . Excessive use of energy without adequate disposal of heat, for example, could plausibly make the planet of a civilization approaching Type I unsuitable to the biology of the dominant life - forms and their food sources . If Earth is an example, then sea temperatures in excess of 35 ° C (95 ° F) would jeopardize marine life and make the cooling of mammals to temperatures suitable for their metabolism difficult if not impossible . Of course, these theoretical speculations may not become problems possibly through the applications of future engineering and technology . Also, by the time a civilization reaches Type I it may have colonized other planets or created O'Neill - type colonies, so that waste heat could be distributed throughout the planetary system . </P> <P> Many extensions and modifications to the Kardashev scale have been proposed . </P> <Ul> <Li> Types 0, IV, and V Kardashev rating: The most straightforward extension of the scale to even more hypothetical Type IV beings who can control or use the entire universe or Type V who control collections of universes . This would also include Type 0 civilizations, who do not rank on the Kardashev scale . The power output of the visible universe is within a few orders of magnitude of 10 W. Such a civilization approaches or surpasses the limits of speculation based on current scientific understanding, and may not be possible . <Ul> <Li> Zoltán Galántai has argued that such a civilization could not be detected, as its activities would be indistinguishable from the workings of nature (there being nothing to compare them to). </Li> <Li> In his book Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku has discussed a Type IV civilization that could harness "extragalactic" energy sources such as dark energy . </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Li> Kardashev alternative rating characteristics: Other proposed changes to the scale use different metrics such as' mastery' of systems, amount of information used, or progress in control of the very small as opposed to the very large . </Li> <Li> Planet mastery (Robert Zubrin): Metrics other than pure power usage have also been proposed . One is' mastery' of a planet, system or galaxy rather than considering energy alone . </Li> <Li> Information mastery (Carl Sagan): Alternatively, Carl Sagan suggested adding another dimension in addition to pure energy usage: the information available to the civilization . <Ul> <Li> He assigned the letter A to represent 10 unique bits of information (less than any recorded human culture) and each successive letter to represent an order of magnitude increase, so that a level Z civilization would have 10 bits . </Li> <Li> In this classification, 1973 Earth is a 0.7 H civilization, with access to 10 bits of information . </Li> <Li> Sagan believed that no civilization has yet reached level Z, conjecturing that so much unique information would exceed that of all the intelligent species in a galactic supercluster and observing that the universe is not old enough to exchange information effectively over larger distances . </Li> <Li> The information and energy axes are not strictly interdependent, so that even a level Z civilization would not need to be Kardashev Type III . </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Li> Microdimensional mastery (John Barrow): John D. Barrow, going by the fact that humans have found it more cost - effective to extend any abilities to manipulate their environment over increasingly smaller dimensions rather than increasingly larger ones, reverses the classification downward from Type I - minus to Type Omega - minus: <Ul> <Li> Type I - minus is capable of manipulating objects over the scale of themselves: building structures, mining, joining and breaking solids; </Li> <Li> Type II - minus is capable of manipulating genes and altering the development of living things, transplanting or replacing parts of themselves, reading and engineering their genetic code; </Li> <Li> Type III - minus is capable of manipulating molecules and molecular bonds, creating new materials; </Li> <Li> Type IV - minus is capable of manipulating individual atoms, creating nanotechnologies on the atomic scale and creating complex forms of artificial life; </Li> <Li> Type V - minus is capable of manipulating the atomic nucleus and engineering the nucleons that compose it; </Li> <Li> Type VI - minus is capable of manipulating the most elementary particles of matter (quarks and leptons) to create organized complexity among populations of elementary particles; culminating in: </Li> <Li> Type Omega - minus is capable of manipulating the basic structure of space and time . </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Li> According to this scale, humans, having wide expertise in various branches of chemistry and biology, have passed the stage of Type III - minus . Type IV - minus technologies (that have had practical and widespread applications) have been seen in areas like nanotechnology, semiconductors, materials science and genetic engineering, whereas Type V - minus has seen large scale application in the field and subfields of nuclear physics . Type VI - minus has had tentative research in the field of particle physics with particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider . </Li> <Li> Civilizational range (Robert Zubrin): Robert Zubrin adapts the Kardashev scale to refer to how widespread a civilization is in space, rather than to its energy use . <Ul> <Li> In his definition, a Type I civilization has spread across its planet . </Li> <Li> A Type II has extensive colonies in its respective stellar system, and </Li> <Li> A Type III has colonized its galaxy . </Li> </Ul> </Li> </Ul>

Type 1 type 2 and type 3 civilizations