How did Oregon sands land in Dune?

They Stopped the Moving Sands. No, this isn’t a quote from the book – it is the title of Frank Herbert’s unpublished report written in the state of Oregon. As a journalist, Herbert visited its deserts while American ecotechnologists were attempting to use plants to stop sands from moving and make this area inhabitable. Stunned by this process, Herbert dove into the issue of turning desert lands into something suitable for life. In time, this fascination grew into a bestselling novel. Thus, the moving sands of Oregon inspired the masterpiece of Dune. 

So, what did the ecotechnologists do in the desert? First, they planted European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria). Once the sands were “secured” in place, other plants were introduced to the area. Thus, by gradual invasion, deserts were filled with life. That’s what the Fremen, the people of Arrakis, do on the planet: in the heart of the desert, they set up “greenhouses” or laboratories, where they grow saplings from oases or “gardens” of the capital. For this vital cause, the Fremen contribute their priceless water.

In the skies of Arrakis

Dune is set in the planet system of the star Canopus. This is a known space object that had already been discovered when Herbert was writing his novel. The star is 109 times greater than the Sun, but it’s highly unstable: the levels of radiation it emits are significantly higher than those in our part of the universe. That means life couldn’t exist in such a planetary system. It’s one of the author’s major astronomy-related mistakes. 

Arrakis itself isn’t perfect, too. Even though such a planet could exist (in mass and size it’s almost identical to the Earth), it wouldn’t look remotely the same. With such a small amount of water on the surface, it would be covered in ice, not scalding sands. Water accumulates and conducts heat, and without it the energy from a star would quickly and massively return into space, never warming up the planet. Consequently, without energy, the planet’s surface temperature would drop below zero and freeze up the surface. Herbert’s mistake is that there are no cold nights on Arrakis, as there are in any desert on Earth.

Other planets in the novel are just as unrealistic. Caladan, the homeworld of Paul Atreides, is covered in wet forests – meaning that there’s a single climate zone on the entire planet. In terms of astronomy and ecology, this is impossible. Depending on its distance from the system’s central star, every area of a planet receives a different amount of energy. This determines the area’s temperature and thus climate; so it cannot be the same throughout the planet.

Geidi Prime, the Harkonnens’ capital world, would also be uninhabitable. In the book, it’s a pitch-black planet – light and energy would be entirely absorbed by its surface, heating it up to very high degrees. No plants or living beings would survive in such conditions. In this sense, “the forget-me-not experiment” is a very illustrative example. If we were to plant only black or white forget-me-nots on a planet, life would become impossible. Covered in black flowers, the land would overheat, and all would decay. And white flowers would reflect nearly all light off the surface, causing it to freeze – flowers would die in this case, too. That’s why we need a balance between black and white, which is absent on Geidi Prime. 

On the contrary, the two moons that circle Arrakis follow the laws of astronomy. The largest of the moons is around 900 km in diameter, while the smallest is 400 km. The diameter of our Moon, the Earth’s satellite, is 3,500 km and because of this impressive size, the Moon affects our planet and its inhabitants. The smaller moons of Arrakis don’t have any effect on its peoples and animals – and thus can peacefully coexist. However, they wouldn’t be seen in the sky, as it’s shown in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation. Instead, they’d look like two very bright stars.

Arrakis is often compared to Mars. However, this is also unscientific. Mars is much smaller in mass and size, with lower gravity, and, unlike Arrakis, doesn’t possess a magnetic field.

Dune as seen by an engineer

Stillsuits. One of Dune’s calling cards are the stillsuits worn by the Fremen, which can recycle nearly all the water produced by the human body. It’s quite a feasible invention and is even described quite accurately in the book. Similar suits exist in real life, only we call them spacesuits, as they are used in outer space. According to NASA, spacesuits recycle over 90% of human metabolic products.

The only thing wrong with stillsuits envisioned by Frank Herbert is the way they generate energy – no matter how active the suit’s wearer is, their activity won’t create enough energy to power the suit; therefore, they’d require additional power sources.

Human supercomputers. Dune’s Guild Navigators can be described as human supercomputers, living AI, or mutant neural networks. In the novel, smart machines and AI had been banned after a machine rebellion. However, people still had to conduct calculations to navigate space. That’s how Guild Navigators appeared, their brains as powerful as supercomputers. They can quickly and accurately perform highly complex mathematical calculations in their mind thanks to spice – a substance produced by Arrakis’ giant worms. However, administering this substance causes irreversible mutations.

One of the most noticeable of those are the characteristic blue eyes. Such an effect has actually been observed in real life. It occurs in outer space or during radiotherapy when charged particles pass through the eye’s vitreous body. This phenomenon has the name of Cherenkov radiation. Particles of matter start glowing in the blue spectrum if they accelerate to a speed higher than that of light in the medium. In rare cases, this effect can be caught on camera – and the resulting picture would show a person with glowing blue eyes, just like in Dune.

Wormholes. Unlike in other popular sci-fi, in Dune, spaceships don’t travel at faster-than-light speeds. Instead, heighliners are used for space travel – these ships can pass through wormholes, where time and space collapse. Thus, heighliners enter the wormhole in one part of the universe and exit in another, lightyears away, in a short amount of time. Such wormholes have actually been described by physicists and, in theory, could actually function just the way they were envisioned by Frank Herbert.

Meteorological satellites. Another thing Herbert had predicted – nearly ten years before they were invented in reality – are meteorological satellites. In the novel, they are used to track the mining of spice.

Some other real devices mentioned in the book are solar cells and windcatchers, known to humanity since time immemorial. On the other hand, the seemingly functional ornithopters wouldn’t be able to fly in real life: these machines, which in the novel mimicked da Vinci’s blueprints, don’t meet the necessary engineering requirements. 

All of the “inexplicable” science in the novel is described as the result of the Holtzman effect, named after a fictional scientist who studied instantaneous long-distance data transfer. However, in his work he had not only solved this task, but also made an unexpected discovery that made it possible to create personal shields, nullify gravity, and “fold” space-time for space travel. Even though these phenomena are reminiscent of what quantum physics studies today, they actually don’t have anything in common. The Holtzman effect was created by Frank Herbert and cannot be explained by contemporary scientists. Moreover, many of its features contradict existing physical theories.

Mikhail Sokolov’s lecture on the science of Dune was held in Mayakovsky Central Public Library on November 10. The event is part of a sci-fi talk series co-organized by ITMO’s School of Physics and Engineering and the Mayakovsky Central Public Library.