And while humanity will undoubtedly never encounter a Type V civilization, the existence of one would make sense. The year 2020 would be especially entertaining for universe-creators, after all.

By comparison, the Type 1 civilization is just getting started. Maybe it’s traveled to the nearest star systems and terraformed a planet or two at best. Humans would be Type 0.

A Long Road to Travel. As we pointed out in the first article, humans are a very, very, long way from ever reaching anything like this.Sagan noted we weren't even at a Type I civilization yet. And ...