Recently I attended a lecture by Dr Lars Tristing of Clusium University, Kansas City, on 'Achieving a Type IV civilisation'. what the Greenpeace zealots say, what distinguishes our civilisation and keeps it so primitive is our low consumption of energy. As Tristing puts it, 'under-energising is the prime cause of poverty, and Friends of the Earth are Enemies of the People'. The famous Kardashev Scale defines a sub-civilisation, such as ours, as one consuming 'substantially less' than [10.sup.16] watts, equivalent to the energy falling on Earth from the Sun. Using energy above this level is characteristic of a Type I civilisation. A Type II civilisation needs to produce 10 billion times the energy of a Type I, and a Type III would be another 10 billion times higher. Kardashev never quantified a Type IV but, according to the Hyperenergy Research Project at Nile University, Missouri, to attain such a level would require a further multiple of 100 to 150 billion. A Type IV would have the technology not only to travel outside the universe but to enter the parallel universes accessible by nanacaloricity from ours by 'wormholes'. Tristing laments the fact that, at present rates of discovering new energy sources (less than 2 per cent per annum), we will be well into the 22nd century before we even attain Type I levels. 'We Neanderthals', he is fond of saying.

Tristing, and still more Professor Nagel Ayer of Heriot-Watt, put their hopes in the recovery of methane hydrates buried under the ocean bed and, most abundantly, under the polar ice-caps. If we are prepared to make the effort to bore about 75 miles below the surface, on a large scale--now made possible by the atom-powered Dongren drills developed on the Rand--we can multiply present energy resources by over 1,000. Russell Bertie of Imperial College believes one square mile of subantarctica can produce more energy than all the wood, coal, gas and oil consumed in the entire history of humanity. The Advanced Action Programme being developed at Anxiety-Bend Main Center of Advanced Technology, Idaho, believes a hydrate recovery programme could reduce the time required to launch a Type I civilisation to "perhaps 20 years or even less'.

Some of the machines required are already evolving at least in a primitive shape, and if they can be built in space, as opposed to being earthbound (and so subject to severe limitations) we will accelerate our advance. Weber Waugh-Spin, of Austin, Texas, points out that we need to exploit natural negative energy by what is known as the Casimir Effect, in which 'squeezed states' of laser beams and false vacuums can produce heat-points of [24.sup.36[degrees]]K. This would require a density not less than [12.sup.90[degrees]]g/cm 14, and Planck Encrgy of c.[ 10.sup.28]eV.

The already designed and partly financed Lisa (laser interferometer space antenna) will be in place by 2012. This is essential to replicate the physical scenario of the original Big Bang, now calculated to have taken place 13.7 billion years ago. Lisa can detect gravitational waves so subtle that they were generated only a trillionth of a second after the BB itself. Dr Ensor Doone of Quantock Tech says that this amazing machine, plus the new Uder (Neutron Determinative Echo Recorder), will allow us to analyse the sonar effect of the BB itself, which he predicts will be seen (or heard) to be multiple. As he puts it, 'Not so much one Big Bang, more a chitty-chitty bang-bang.'

A Type III civilisation, and certainly the hypothetical Type IV, would be able to replicate many of the characteristics of Big Bangs, using vast machines whose power is measured in terawatts or even petawatts (trillion and quadrillion energy units). So far, explains Professor Hardly Hanginther of Columbia, a firm theory on which to base action has eluded us. Einstein never found his unified theory of the universe. If his general theory of relativity is still sufficient to explain big events like black holes, and quantum theory deals with minutiae such as electrons, quarks and even Calabi-Yao Manifolds (too small to be seen), there are difficulties in reconciling them. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), stretching over the Franco-Swiss frontier near Geneva, is pushing quantum theory further, as will afortiori the enormous LHC, powered by 20 quadrillion volts, being built over 100 square miles in New Mexico, prototype for the space-LHC which will occupy 100,000 cubic miles between Earth and the Moon, and will (says its designer Ore T'Hoofer-Astair) "take us into Type I instrumentation'. Minute particles, under pressure, can cause what is known as ekpyrotis, fires which, multiplied many quadrillion times, lead to what Ove calls 'the big splat'.

But quantum theory does not explain tiny black holes or the so-called dark energy they create which, we now know, constitutes 73 per cent of the universe. But Einstein's general theory is compatible with string theory, now regarded as 'the ultimate theory on universe origins'. Over to Ethel Renorforman of MIT: 'There are, in fact, five string theories, but they become identical if M-theory, dealing with a system not of the usual ten but eleven dimensions, is added.' As she says, 'We have to get out of the straitjacket of 10-d hyperspace.' She compares unified string theory to 'a gigantic shoehorn' or an old-fashioned metal corset, or even a '19th-century Massachusetts pickle-jar'. Using dark energy we can pour through the wormholes into fresh interiors or exterior universes, or create the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and march over, rather as the gods parade over the rainbow into the new Valhalla in the last act of Das Rheingold.

Using implosion machines of lithium deuteride, and the new techniques of anisotrophy built into a hyperspace graviton-spinner invented by the Brussels pundit Dr Tonipal Mandelson, we can imitate the rotating rings, or 'astrospinners' formed by black hole collapses. Such giant spins produce colossal sonar 'whyrrls'. as they are called, known as 'the Kinnock Amplifier'. Though we tend to think of hyperspace in terms of light and energy, in fact sound is at times pre-eminent even when, at minus [40.sup.3] hertz, it is undetectable by any known instrumentation. Such is the case with what is called a pinteroid, a sub-atomic particle emitting no sonar waves, except, disconcertingly and unpredictably, sounds known as expletive implodes, often of a pseudo-metrical kind. Dr Blondel Antonius of Tullynally University has constructed an Infrasonic Pattern Indicator to discover their significance by probing below 403 hertz, though, as she says, 'I doubt if they hold the secret of the universe.'

In these new frontiers of science, metaphors work better than painstaking explanations. Professor Tammy Stoweyover says: 'I compare black holes, with their hypercaloricity, to fricassees, and the collapse into algid, hyperborean gelid-space is a kind of frozen waffle-spinner.' At Mayfair Tech, Dr Kim Agen claims: 'It will be like a gigantic anthill with all the thrusting energy done by nanobots (tiny robots). They will be self-replicating and I look forward to it.'

Johnson, Paul