The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal. The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. A Type I civilization has available all the energy impinging on its home planet, Type II all the energy of its sun, and Type III of its galaxy. The scale is only theoretical and in terms of an actual civilization highly speculative; however, it puts energy consumption of an entire civilization in a cosmic perspective. It was first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. Others have extended the scale to even more hypothetical Type IV beings who can control or utilize the entire universe, or Type V that control collections of universes. Other metrics other than pure power usage have also been proposed, such as 'mastery' of a planet, system or galaxy rather than considering energy alone^[1], or considering the amount of information controlled by a civilization rather than the amount of energy.

Definition[link]

In 1964, Kardashev defined three levels of civilizations, based on the order of magnitude of the amount of power available to them:

• Type I: "Technological level close to the level presently (here referring to 1964) attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×10¹⁹ erg/sec^[2] (4 × 10¹² watts.) Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "A level near contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 10¹⁶ and 10 ¹⁷ watts."^[3]

• Type II: "A civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star (for example, the stage of successful construction of a Dyson sphere), with energy consumption at ≈4×10³³ erg/sec.^[2] Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization capable of utilizing and channeling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4 × 10²⁶ watts."^[3]

• Type III: "A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at≈4×10⁴⁴ erg/sec."^[2] Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4 × 10³⁷ Watts."^[3]

Current status of human civilization[link]

Michio Kaku suggested that humans may attain Type I status in about 100–200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in about 100,000 to a million years.^[4]

Carl Sagan suggested defining intermediate values (not considered in Kardashev's original) by interpolating and extrapolating the values given above for types 1, 2 and 3, by using the formula

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): K = \frac{\log_{10}{MW}} {10}

,

where value K is a civilization's Kardashev rating and MW is the power it uses, in megawatts. He calculated humanity's civilization type (in 1973) to be about 0.7, with respect to this extrapolation (apparently using 10 terawatt (TW) as the value for 1970s humanity).^[5]

In 2008, total world energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×10¹⁸ J=132,000 TWh), equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×10¹³ W - 0.7 Kardashev scale).^[6]

The total photosynthetic productivity of earth is between ~1500–2250 TW, or 47,300–71,000 exajoules per year. Using a figure of 178,000 TJ of solar energy hitting the Earth's surface (see Earth's energy budget), the total photosynthetic efficiency of the planet is 0.84% to 1.26%, making nature a 0.8 Kardashev scale civilization.

Energy development[link]

Type I civilization methods[link]

• Large-scale application of fusion power. According to mass-energy equivalence, Type I implies the conversion of about 2 kg of matter to energy per second. While there is no known method to convert matter (by itself) completely into energy, an equivalent energy release could theoretically be achieved by fusing approximately 280 kg of hydrogen into helium per second,^[7] a rate roughly equivalent to 8.9×10⁹ kg/year. A cubic km of water contains about 10¹¹ kg of hydrogen, and the Earth's oceans contain about 1.3×10⁹ cubic km of water, meaning that this rate of consumption could be sustained over geological time scales.
• Antimatter^[8] in large quantities would have a mechanism to produce power on a scale several factors above our current level of technology. In antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. Their energy density (energy released per mass) is about four orders of magnitude greater than that from using nuclear fission, and about two orders of magnitude greater than the best possible yield from fusion.^[9] The reaction of 1 kg of anti-matter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×10¹⁷ J (180 petajoules) of energy.^[10] Although antimatter is sometimes proposed as a source of energy, this is currently infeasible. Artificially producing antimatter according to current understanding of the laws of physics involves first converting energy into mass, so there is no net gain. Artificially created antimatter is only usable as a medium of energy storage but not as an energy source, unless future technological developments (contrary to the conservation of the baryon number, such as a CP Violation in favour of antimatter) allow the conversion of ordinary matter into anti-matter. There are a number of naturally occurring sources of antimatter ^[11][12][13] we may theoretically be able to cultivate and harvest in the future.
• Solar energy through converting sunlight into electricity by either solar cells and concentrating solar power or indirectly through wind and hydroelectric power. Currently, there is no known way for human civilization to successfully utilize the equivalent of the Earth's total absorbed solar energy without completely coating the surface with man-made structures, which is presently not feasible. However, if a civilization constructed very large space-based solar power satellites, Type I power levels might be achievable.

Figure of a Dyson swarm surrounding a star

Type II civilization methods[link]

• A Dyson sphere or Dyson swarm and similar constructs are hypothetical megastructures originally described by Freeman Dyson as a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely enclose a star and capture most or all of its energy output.^[14]
• Perhaps a more exotic means to generate usable energy would be to feed a stellar mass into a black hole, and collect photons emitted by the accretion disc.^[15][16] Less exotic would be simply to capture photons already escaping from the accretion disc, reducing a black hole's angular momentum; known as the Penrose process.
• Star lifting is a process where an advanced civilization could remove a substantial portion of a star's matter in a controlled manner for other uses.
• Anti-matter is likely to be produced as an industrial byproduct of a number of megascale engineering processes (such as some of the Star Lifting above) And therefore could be recycled.
• In multiple-star systems of a sufficiently large number of stars, absorbing a small but significant fraction of the output of each individual star.
• White Holes theoretically, if they exist, could provide large amounts of energy from collecting the matter propelling outwards.
• Gamma-Ray Bursts are another exotic theoretically possible way for a highly advanced civilization to utilize as a power source.

Type III civilization methods[link]

• Type III civilizations might use the same techniques employed by a Type II civilization, but applied to all of the stars of one or more galaxies individually.^[17]
• They may also be able to tap into the energy released from the Supermassive black holes which are believed to exist at the center of most galaxies.
• The emissions from quasars can be readily compared to those of small active galaxies and could provide a massive power source if collectable.

Civilization implications[link]

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^[18] 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, similar to 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 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 in reality thanks to the application 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 the amount of waste heat could be distributed throughout the solar system.

Extensions to the original scale[link]

The state that human civilization currently occupies was originally Type I in the Kardashev scale, but has a K value below 1 using Sagan's logarithmic formula (described above).

Zoltan Galantai has defined a further extrapolation of the scale, a Type IV level which controls the energy output of the visible universe; this is within a few orders of magnitude of 10⁴⁵ W. Such a civilization approaches or surpasses the limits of speculation based on current scientific understanding, and may not be possible. Frank J. Tipler's Omega point would presumably occupy this level, as would the Biocosm hypothesis. Galantai 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).^[19]

However, Milan M. Ćirković has argued that "Type IV" should instead be used to refer to a civilization that has harnessed the power of its supercluster, or "the largest gravitationally bound structure it originated in."^[20] For the Local Supercluster, this would be approximately 10⁴² W.

Dr. Michio Kaku has discussed a Type IV civilization, which could harness "extragalactic" energy sources such as dark energy, in his book Parallel Worlds.^[21]

In contrast to simply increasing the maximum power level covered by the scale, Carl Sagan suggested adding another dimension: the information available to the civilization. He assigned the letter A to represent 10⁶ 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 10³¹ bits. In this classification, 1973 Earth is a 0.7 H civilization, with access to 10¹³ bits of information. 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 effectively exchange information over larger distances. The information and energy axes are not strictly interdependent, so that even a level Z civilization would not need to be Kardashev Type III.^[5]

Examples in science fiction[link]

Type I[link]

• The humans from Stargate Universe use the power of the planet Icarus, with a crust containing massive amounts of a power-generating element, to route enough power to the Stargate to encode or dial the ninth chevron, in contrast to normal intragalactic, seven-chevron addresses and intergalactic eight-chevron addresses. This allowed the gate to open to the Ancient's ship Destiny, which had been travelling for many millennia under solar power and had travelled through hundreds of galaxies other than our own.^{[citation needed]}

Type II[link]

• In the Ringworld series by Larry Niven, a ring a million miles wide is built and spun (for gravity) around a star roughly one astronomical unit away. The ring can be viewed as a functional version of a Dyson sphere with the interior surface area of 3 million Earth-sized planets. Because it is only a partial Dyson sphere, it can be viewed as an intermediary between Type I and Type II. Both Dyson spheres and the Ringworld suffer from gravitational instability, however—a major focus of the Ringworld series is coping with this instability in the face of partial collapse of the Ringworld civilization.
• The territory of Eelong in the Pendragon Series by D. J. MacHale utilizes all power from a belt of suns known as the Skaa.^[22]
• Stephen Baxter's "Morlock" of The Time Ships occupy a spherical shell around the sun the diameter of earth's orbit, spinning for gravity along one band. The shell's inner surface along this band is inhabited by cultures in many lower stages of development, while the K II Morlock civilization uses the entire structure for power and computation.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics", the Enterprise discovers an abandoned Dyson sphere.^[23]
• In Bob Shaw's 'Orbitsville', the giant sphere which encases a sun is presumed to have been built by using the output of the star itself. In the sequel, 'Orbitsville Departure', more spheres are confirmed and may escalate the builders to Type III.^{[citation needed]}
• In the Halo universe, the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and the hostile alien society known as the Covenant have both attained type II status. The UNSC is shown to be able to induce a star to go supernova and have a territory consisting of more than 800 planetary systems.
• In Perry Rhodan's multiverse, the humanity compounds a large society with many other species and live in some of the galaxies of the Local Group. They are thus able to progressively use the energy released from many of their stars.
• In John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" the Consu have enclosed one of the suns in their multiple-star home system within a Dyson sphere.
• In the Mass Effect Universe, according to Michio Kaku, Humanity has advanced to a Type II civilization, having colonized several planets and competing with other Type II civilizations (such as the Asari, Salarians, and Turians).

Type III[link]

• In Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. The stellar energy output of the whole galaxy is utilized by the Galactic Community of Worlds.^[24]
• In The Time Ships, human time travellers stranded in the Paleocene era develop into a civilization that encases every star of the Milky Way in energy-conserving artifacts searching for means of engineering escape to a universe more favorable to continued existence of life. Baxter's Xeelee aliens have a similar goal, deconstructing entire galaxies to do so, suggesting Type III+.
• The Tyranids of the Warhammer 40k Universe allegedly travelled to the galaxy after consuming their own, making them a Type III civilization.
• Galaxia, the ultimate destiny of humanity in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, interconnected all human minds with the material of the galaxy, enabling them to utilize all its resources.
• In the movie Men in Black, agents J and K must recover a galaxy stored inside a small ball as an energy source.

Type IV[link]

A Type IV civilization is capable of universal-scale influence:

• The immortal "Guardians of the Universe", creators of the Green Lantern Corps (DC Comics), have manipulated events on an intergalactic scale for three billion years.
• The backstory of The Dancers at the End of Time series by Michael Moorcock describes a civilization which consumed all the energy in all the stars in the universe, save Earth's own sun, in order to fuel an existence in which the inheritors of Earth lived as near omnipotent gods.^[25]
• In a rare mention of the scale within a work of fiction, the Doctor Who novel The Gallifrey Chronicles, a Time Lord named Marnal asserts that "the Time Lords were the Type-4 civilization. We had no equals. We controlled the fundamental forces of the entire universe. Nothing could communicate with us on our level."^[26]
• The Priors in the House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds could be placed as a Type IV, being surmised by one of the characters for being responsible for the apparent emptiness of the Boötes void some 250 million light years distance.^{[citation needed]}
• The Xeelee in the Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter. They modified their own history and have spread across the universe, typically being concentrated in the heart of galaxies where they use the black holes for their own purposes.^{[citation needed]}
• Michio Kaku, in a lecture, said that in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the god-like Q Continuum could be considered above Type IV drawing their energy from outside the universe.
• The Players of The New Cosmogony, a fictional Nobel Prize oration in A Perfect Vacuum by Stanisław Lem, are altering the laws of physics for their own purposes.^[27]
• In Lexx a character named Mantrid uses exponential growth to make copies upon copies of his constructor arms called "Mantrid drones", eventually using all the matter in the light universe, which ends up destroying the universe when too much matter accumulates in one place, "unbalancing" it.
• In Perry Rhodan's multiverse, thanks to the "onion-shell-model" in which all evolution of life is based upon inside the book series, there exist higher forms of life. They are named in order of scope and power: "superintelligences" (SI), "matter-fountains/matter-sinks" and finally the "high-powers". These all are able to affect the energy of one entire galaxy or even more.
• In The Last Question by Isaac Asimov, humanity progresses from a Type I to Type IV civilization, at first harnessing the power of a single star, eventually extracting energy on a cosmic scale.
• In The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, a sentient species from another universe reaches Type I in conjunction with humanity, by developing a technique of exchanging electrons and protons across universes. To combat the flux of energy, humans reach Type IV by developing a technique of harvesting the energy from yet another universe, which exists in a pre-big-bang state, or a "Cosmic Egg" state.

Type V, and beyond[link]

Such hypothetical civilizations have either transcended their universe of origin or arose within a multiverse or other higher-order membrane of existence, and are capable of deity-scale manipulation of individual discrete universes from an external frame of reference. In fiction, their artifacts or endowed abilities find their way into the hands of relatively juvenile civilizations, such as humanity:

• The Monitors (DC Comics) are tasked with preventing travel between universes (as it, they maintain, causes damage to the Multiverse). Each of the 52 parallel universes is separated from the others by the the Source Wall.
• While mainly used for comparatively far more trivial purposes, the Star Brand bestows upon its bearer almost infinite power, such as the ability to transport oneself, or even entire planets, from one universe to another by mere force of will.
• In the anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, humanity rapidly progresses from a primitive, barely industrialized society to a level where using galaxy-sized weapons and traveling through time and other universes is possible during our prolonged war with the Anti-Spiral Tribe. In turn the Anti-Spiral Tribe are an ancient, godlike race whose technology allows the creation, destruction and manipulation of galaxies and even universes on a whim--such as using galaxies as projectile weapons or creating small universes as battlefields.
• During Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men, one character placed the Shi'ar alien empire as a Type V civilization.^{[citation needed]}
• The 2011 God and the Universe episode of the American History Channel television series The Universe explored the possibility of sufficiently advanced civilizations custom-building new universes.^[28]

Connections with sociology and anthropology[link]

Kardashev's theory can be viewed as the expansion of some social theories, especially from social evolutionism. It is close to the theory of Leslie White, author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959). White attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book, echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As measure of society advancement he proposed the measure energy consumption of a given society (thus his theory is known as the energy theory of cultural evolution). He differentiates between five stages of human development. In the first stage, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second stage, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third stage, they use the energy of plants (which White refers to as agricultural revolution). In the fourth stage, they learn to use the energy of natural resources—such as coal, oil, and gas. Finally, in the fifth stage, they harness nuclear energy. White introduced a formula P=E×T, where P measures the advancement of the culture, E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilizing the energy.

Criticism[link]

It has been argued that, because we cannot understand advanced civilizations, we cannot predict their behavior; thus, Kardashev's visualization may not reflect what will actually occur for an advanced civilization. This central argument is found in the book Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life.^[29]

Robert Zubrin uses the terms to refer to how widespread a civilization is in space, rather than to its energy use. In other words, a Type I civilization has spread across its planet, a Type II has extensive colonies in its respective stellar system, and a Type III has colonized its galaxy.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

Sustainable development portal

• Astroengineering
• Clarke's three laws
• Drake equation
• Michio Kaku
• Orders of magnitude (power)
• Orders of magnitude (energy)
• Sustainability
• Technological singularity
• White's Law
• World energy resources and consumption

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

• Kardashev civilizations
• Detectability of Extraterrestrial Technological Activities
• Flash Animation on Civilizations
• After Kardashev: Farewell to Super Civilizations
• Exotic Civilizations: Beyond Kardashev
• Useful Comparisons of Fictional Works Using the Kardashev Scale

This article contains Japanese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji and kana.

Michio Kaku (加来 道雄, Kaku Michio^?, born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, a co-founder of string field theory,^[1] a futurist, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science. He has written several books about physics and related topics; he has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film; and he writes extensive online blogs and articles. He has written two New York Times best sellers, Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physics of the Future (2011). He has hosted several TV specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery Channel, and the Science Channel.

Early life and education[link]

Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. His grandfather came to the United States to take part in the clean-up operation after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake^{[citation needed]}. His father was born in California but was educated in Japan and spoke little English. Both his parents were put in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where they met and where his two brothers were born.

At Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, Kaku assembled an atom smasher in his parents' garage for a science fair project.^[2] At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and in 1972 he held a lectureship at Princeton University.

During the Vietnam War, Kaku completed his U.S. Army basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and his advanced individual training at Fort Lewis, Washington.^[3] However, the Vietnam War ended before he was deployed as an infantryman.

Academic career[link]

Kaku became a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,^[4] and New York University.^[5] He currently holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York.^[6]

Kaku has had over 70 articles published in physics journals such as Physical Review, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics.^[7] In 1974, along with Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University, he authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form.^[8][9]

Kaku is the author of several textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory.

Popular science[link]

Kaku is most widely known as a popularizer of science.^[10] He has written books and appeared on many television programs as well as film. He also hosts a weekly radio program.

Books[link]

Kaku is the author of various popular science books.

• Hyperspace (1994)
• Beyond Einstein (with Jennifer Thompson) (1995)
• Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century^[11] (1998)
• Einstein's Cosmos (2004)
• Parallel Worlds (2004)
• Physics of the Impossible (2008)
• Physics of the Future (2011)

Hyperspace was a best-seller and was voted one of the best science books of the year by both The New York Times^[10] and The Washington Post. Parallel Worlds was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in the UK.^[12]

Radio[link]

Kaku is the host of the weekly, one-hour radio program Explorations, produced by the Pacifica Foundation's WBAI in New York. "Explorations" is syndicated to community and independent radio stations and makes previous broadcasts available on the program's website. Kaku defines the show as dealing with the general topics of science, war, peace, and the environment.

In April 2006, Kaku began broadcasting Science Fantastic on 90 commercial radio stations, the only nationally syndicated science program on commercial radio in the United States. It is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and now reaches 130 radio stations and America's Talk on XM. The program is formatted as a live listener call-in show, focusing on "futurology," which he defines as the future of science.^{[citation needed]} Featured guests include Nobel laureates and top researchers on the topics of string theory, time travel, black holes, gene therapy, aging, space travel, artificial intelligence, and SETI. When Kaku is busy filming for television, Science Fantastic goes on hiatus, sometimes for several months. Kaku is also a frequent guest on many programs, where he is outspoken in all areas and issues he considers of importance, such as the program Coast to Coast AM, where on 30 November 2007, he reaffirmed his belief that there is a 100% probability of extraterrestrial life in the universe.^[13]

Kaku has appeared on The Opie and Anthony Show a number of times, discussing popular fiction such as Back to The Future, Lost, and the theories behind time-travel that these and other fictional entertainment focus on.

Television and film[link]

Kaku has appeared in many forms of media and on many programs and networks, including Good Morning America, The Screen Savers, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, Nightline, 20/20, Naked Science, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Al Jazeera English, Fox News Channel, The History Channel, Conan, The Science Channel, The Discovery Channel, TLC, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Colbert Report, The Art Bell Show and its successor, Coast To Coast AM, BBC World News America, The Opie & Anthony Show, The Covino & Rich Show, Head Rush, The Late Show with David Letterman, and Real Time with Bill Maher.

In 1999, Kaku was one of the scientists profiled in the feature-length film Me and Isaac Newton, directed by Michael Apted. It played theatrically in the United States, was later broadcast on national TV, and won several film awards.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Kaku appeared in the short documentary Obsessed & Scientific. The film is about the possibility of time travel and the people who dream about it. It screened at the Montreal World Film Festival and a feature film expansion is in development talks. Kaku also appeared in the ABC documentary UFOs: Seeing Is Believing, in which he suggested that while he believes it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials have ever actually visited Earth, we must keep our minds open to the possible existence of civilizations a million years ahead of us in technology, where entirely new avenues of physics open up. He also discussed the future of interstellar exploration and alien life in the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet as one of the multiple speakers who co-hosted the show, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity on The History Channel.

In February 2006, Kaku appeared as presenter in the BBC-TV four-part documentary Time which seeks to explore the mysterious nature of time. Part one of the series concerns personal time, and how we perceive and measure the passing of time. The second in the series deals with cheating time, exploring possibilities of extending the lifespan of organisms. The geological time covered in part three explores the ages of the earth and the sun. Part four covers the topics of cosmological time, the beginning of time and the events that occurred at the instant of the big bang.

On January 28, 2007, Kaku hosted the Discovery Channel series 2057. This three-hour program discussed how medicine, the city, and energy could change over the next 50 years.

In 2008, Kaku hosted the three-hour BBC-TV documentary Visions of the Future, on the future of computers, medicine, and quantum physics, and he appeared in several episodes of the History Channel's Universe series.

On December 1, 2009, he began hosting a 12-episode weekly TV series for the Science Channel at 10 pm, called Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, based on his best-selling book. Each 30-minute episode discusses the scientific basis behind imaginative schemes, such as time travel, parallel universes, warp drive, star ships, light sabers, force fields, teleportation, invisibility, death stars, and even superpowers and flying saucers. Each episode includes interviews with the world's top scientists working on prototypes of these technologies, interviews with science fiction fans, clips from science fiction movies, and special effects and computer graphics. Although these inventions are impossible today, the series discusses when these technologies might become feasible in the future.^[14]

In 2010, he began to appear in a series on the website Gametrailers.com called Science of Games, discussing the scientific aspects of various popular video games such as Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Kaku is popular in mainstream media because of his knowledge and his accessible approach to presenting complex subjects in science. While his technical writings are confined to theoretical physics, his public speaking and media appearances cover a broad range of topics, from the Kardashev scale to more esoteric subjects such as wormholes and time travel. In January 2007, Kaku visited Oman. While there, he talked at length to select members of that country's decision makers. In an interview with local media, Dr Kaku elaborated on his vision of mankind's future. Kaku considers climate change and terrorism as serious threats in man's evolution from a Type 0 civilization to Type 1.^[15]

He is pictured in Symphony of Science's newest song (as of September 6, 2011), 'The Quantum World.'

On October 11, 2010, Michio Kaku appeared in the BBC program "What Happened Before the Big Bang" (along with Laura Mersini-Houghton, Andrei Linde, Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, Neil Turok, and other notable cosmologists and physicists), where he propounded his theory of the universe created out of nothing.^[16]

Social policy advocacy[link]

Kaku has publicly stated his concerns over matters including the anthropogenic cause of global warming, nuclear armament, nuclear power and the general misuse of science.^[17] He was critical of the Cassini–Huygens space probe because of the 72 pounds (33 kg) of plutonium contained in the craft for use by its radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Conscious of the possibility of casualties if the probe's fuel were dispersed into the environment during a malfunction and crash as the probe was making a 'sling-shot' maneuver around earth, Kaku publicly criticized NASA's risk assessment.^[18] He has also spoken on the dangers of space junk and called for more and better monitoring. Kaku is generally a vigorous supporter of the exploration of outer space, believing that the ultimate destiny of the human race may lie in extrasolar planets; but he is critical of some of the cost-ineffective missions and methods of NASA.

Kaku credits his anti-nuclear war position to programs he heard on the Pacifica Radio network, during his student years in California. It was during this period that he made the decision to turn away from a career developing the next generation of nuclear weapons in association with Edward Teller and focused on research, teaching, writing and media.^{[citation needed]} Kaku joined with others such as Helen Caldicott, Jonathan Schell, Peace Action and was instrumental in building a global anti-nuclear weapons movement that arose in the 1980s, during the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Kaku was a board member of Peace Action and on the board of radio station WBAI-FM in New York City where he originated his long running program, Explorations, that focused on the issues of science, war, peace and the environment.

His remark from an interview in support of SETI, "We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation...and we wouldn't even know.", is used in the third Symphony of Science installment "Our Place in the Cosmos".

Personal life[link]

Kaku is married to Shizue Kaku and has two daughters.^[19]

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michio Kaku

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• In Depth interview with Kaku, October 3, 2010

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Greydon Square at the Great American God-Out in Manhattan, November 15, 2007; copyright Greydon Square
Background information
Birth name	Eddie Collins
Also known as	Apocalypse Greydon Cubed Super Gross The Black Carl Sagan
Born	(1981-09-28) September 28, 1981 (age 30)
Origin	Compton, USA
Genres	Hip hop / rap
Instruments	Rapping, Vocals
Years active	2004 – present
Associated acts	Adil Omar, Traumah, Canibus

Greydon Square (born Eddie Collins on September 28, 1981) is an American rapper. He is an Iraq War veteran and an outspoken atheist who promotes discussion on philosophical issues, as well as having studied physics full time before moving on to study computer science.^[1]

Biography[link]

Collins grew up in Compton, California, a historically impoverished suburb of Los Angeles, where he was raised as an orphan and became immersed in gang culture.^[1] In May 2001, he enlisted in the United States Army. He went on to serve in the Iraq War in March 2004. After returning from Iraq, Collins began attending college in Phoenix, Arizona as a physics major. It was at this time that he began questioning his prior religious beliefs and became an atheist, posting videos on YouTube. He has appeared in several television documentaries^[2][3] and radio shows, and his music has attracted fans such as Penn Jillette and Richard Dawkins.^[4] He is also a member of the international secular hip-hop activist movement The Anti-Injustice Movement (aka AIM Clika) and now runs his own organization Grand Unified Theory which uses creativity to educate about science and rational thinking.

Music career[link]

Collins has been expressing himself through rap under his stage name of Greydon Square since 2004. Among his influences are Phil Collins, DJ Quik, Dr Dre, Quincy Jones, Stanley Clarke, Cedric Williams, and The Bee Gees. His first album, Absolute, was released in 2004 and is no longer available. His follow-up album The Compton Effect, was released in 2007 after much delay. After being approached by several independent record labels and one major one, Collins created his own company to distribute the record.^[4] In 2008, he released his second album The CPT Theorem. The titles of these two albums are references to the city of Compton (also called CPT) where he grew up, and to the Compton effect and the CPT Theorem from physics, which he studies. His music deals with philosophical issues (particularly with regard to atheism and science), political issues, the war in Iraq and his experiences as a soldier who had to fight in this war, and his childhood which he had to spend in group homes.

In 2010 he announced the release of his third studio album, The Kardashev Scale, along with an EP titled Serpents of Eden in collaboration with Adil Omar. He's also a confirmed guest on Omar's debut solo album The Mushroom Cloud Effect alongside Kool G Rap on a song titled "Summertime".^[5]

The song titled "War Porn" from his latest album The Kardashev Scale was performed in collaboration with hip-hop artist Canibus.^[6]

Discography[link]

Solo albums[link]

Collaboration albums[link]

See also[link]

• American Atheists
• West Coast hip hop
• List of West Coast hip hop artists

References[link]