The Kardashev scale is a method of classifying a civilization's level of technological advancement according to the total amount of energy it is able to harness, proposed by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. A Type I civilization can command roughly the total energy available on its home planet, a Type II civilization can harness the total output of its home star, and a Type III civilization can harness the output of its entire home galaxy, with human civilization currently well below Type I. The scale is used mainly as a conceptual framework in discussions of astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence rather than as a precise measurement, since no civilization beyond Earth's has ever been observed to calibrate it against.
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