You’ve made it to Galaxy 3812, a hypothetical galaxy that houses a type III civilization.
One of the first things you’ll notice are the Dyson spheres that surround the different stars in this galaxy. These theoretical megastructures would be constructed of incredibly strong, advanced materials that cover a star and can withstand its extreme heat.
You might see a couple different versions of these Dyson spheres as you travel across the galaxy. There’s the classic Dyson sphere, a solid shell or series of rings that fully wraps around a star.
Then there’s the Dyson swarm, a group of satellites rotating around a star, collecting its energy. And finally, there’s the Dyson bubble. This one is a bunch of mirrors floating in space and near the star. The idea is that the mirrors will redirect the star’s energy to where it’s needed.
OK, we’ve stared at the Sun long enough, now it’s time to experience the different ways you can travel around.
If you want to take a slower route without using any fuel, you can try traveling via solar sails. This new spacecraft uses large mirrors to propel itself, using solar radiation pressure from a star. This will help you travel longer distances without the need to carry any fuel.
It won’t just be about humans having new ways to travel; we’ll also have things like launch loops to send materials around space. This would allow civilizations to transport materials throughout the solar system easily, making space colonization faster than ever.
As soon as you arrive, you’ll notice an incredibly advanced and futuristic space colony, but it wasn’t always like this. Millions of years ago, when this civilization was a type 0, this planet looked similar to what Mars or Venus might look like today. The environment was incredibly hostile to human life. It had no atmosphere, and it seemed impossible that billions of people could live here one day. But over millions of years, that’s changed.
A large part of this massive change was due to a type III civilization’s ability to terraform planets.
That has given this civilization the ability to modify key aspects of planets in their solar systems, from adjusting the atmosphere to changing the entire surface. They could also release genetically engineered organisms that can live on and alter the planet in various ways. You could release an organism that might be able to suck up or change any toxins in the atmosphere.
Even a planet’s orbit could be changed whenever they wanted. If the civilization really likes a planet but they don’t love the spot it’s in, they can move it to an area of the solar system that would be easier to sustain life.
Remember the Dyson sphere we looked at earlier? That’s a megastructure, and there’s a lot more of them throughout the galaxy. One of them being the O’Neill Cylinder.
This habitat is a massive, rotating cylinder. It’s 6.5 km (4 mi) in diameter and 26 km (16 mi) long. This megastructure would house millions of people and could feel exactly like Earth. We could control the temperature, the weather, the day and night cycle. Whatever we wanted.
If we wanted to build these megastructures in our Universe, we’d need to mine almost every planet in our Solar System. But in this type III civilization, it’s no biggie. Since we could seamlessly travel to multiple solar systems, it would be easy to mine a few solar systems that we don’t really care about.
In addition to all these incredible advancements, humanity would be moving toward a type IV civilization. This means that they’ll now have access to multiple universes, and they’ll slowly be making their way toward immortality.
