Dune Is One of the Most Scientifically Inaccurate Sci-fis of All Time

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Credits:
Writer: Julia Masselos
Editor: Nick Shishkin
Narration: Alex McColgan

#astum #space #dune #spacetravel #film

[esnevip]

The spice doesn't make the faster than light travel possible, it makes it navigable.

[brendanjones]

I disagree. Eating a Magic Mushroom on a spaceship can lead to lightspeed travel... for the user.

[stcredzero]

A point you missed from the books, is how the Sandworm lifecycle also acts to sequester water away from the ecosystem. The Sandworms effectively de-terraform planets, instead Arraki-forming them. By causing an environmental shift, you reduce the population of Sandworms and their other forms, thereby reducing the proportion of sequestered water, which further increases water in the environment, further reducing the population of Sandworms. Eventually, you get an exponential S-curve transition back to an ocean-covered terrestrial world.

[MrCovi]

The way the visions of the future are explained in the book is less "Oh I predicted the exact events that will happen" but as a sea of probabilities, with hills that block your view in some places because there are variables you don't know. Its less about prophetic visions and more about opening your mind to fully calculate everything you know to be able to see what could happen, what probably will happen, and what might happen.
You aren't "seeing the future" when you lift your arms to catch a frisbee in flight, you're simply expecting that it will be in front of you in a moment. But if a dog jumps out from your blind spot and catches it instead, your prediction was wrong. Thus is the prescience that the Spice imparts in Dune. So this actually doesn't conflict with causality or information conservation.

[MrQuantumInc]

Dune is definitely more concerned with sociology/anthropology than physics. The physics of the shields and faster than light travel or prescience are ignored in favor of long discussions of how they affect society and how people think.
There is also some discussion of biology on Arrakis. It is a plot point that some people smuggle a sandworm to another desert planet only for it to immediately starve. It is possible to transport and replicate the entire ecosystem, but not fast enough to counter the spice monopoly.

[andyelliott]

Denis Villeneuve's Dune changes how FTL is depicted, he visualises the Heighliners as gateways whereas in the books and David Lynch's Dune, a Heighliner is a giant vessel housing thousands of passenger vessels. The Spice is used to evolve Guild navigators into mutated humans with the ability to see across space and time using prescience, which allows them to plot a safe route before the Heighliner folds space. The Spice does not create folded space, that is all done by the Holtzman Interstellar Engines which use an unknown energy source most likely Nuclear Fusion but the Spice does allow humans to use the Holtzman effect for Interstellar travel or "Travelling without moving".

[HCG]

The lore is very clear about why the shield allows slow moving things through. It’s so air can pass and so you can interact with objects

[weirdkitty]

When Herbert wrote Dune, he didn't know the orbits of exoplanets. It was the 1960s. He picked Canopus, Alpha Giedi, Menkar and other bright stars because they were bright, not because any of them made sense for planets. Earth Star Trek at the time also did this.

But the 'black sun' was added for the film, as the real Alpha Giedi would indeed be blindingly bright, not black. It means none of them can go outside, or have their eyeballs melted and go blind.

It is also possible he was thinking of Sirius, which would be much closer, so he picked A Giedi.

[PhilRounds]

Guild Navigators are navigators. They don't fold space, they allow for the guidance of the ship so it goes where they want it to. I believe Heighliners are built by Ix, a planet that is responsible for most of the advanced technology in the Dune universe.

[KentoLeoDragon]

The Sand Worms have a larval form called a Sand Trout. They abhor water and use their bodies to sequester it. I think the idea is that besides the Fremen's underground water stores, the Sand Trouts themselves may have sequestered an ocean's worth of water deep underground. They could have released this water to transform Arrakis back into a more watery world. That would destroy spice production so no one wanted to do it.

[itzhexen]

The problem with it's science is that it's science fiction.

[legendaryrat]

The way prescience is explained in the books and hinted at in the film, is less pure precognition and more glimpsing quantum uncertainty. Paul describes the experience in the book like gazing at a branching river or a tree, with each branch representing a possible outcome. I think what Herbert was going for was akin to being able to see how time unfolds in the events that Schrodinger's Cat was both alive or dead. Almost like the math used to calculate quantum physics made manifest.

[Muritaipet]

You've missed the point of the shields, which are one of the most critical parts of the Dune universe.
1) Shields eliminate the use of all technological weapons - guns, lasguns, nukes etc etc. *You have to use knives.*
2) This creates a universe where *wars require medieval level combatants.* Their wars are fought with knives
3) This allows a feudal society to exist. "Kingdoms" with *the toughest knife fighters, from the nastiest planets, rule the universe.*

[dbuck]

As I remember it from reading all the Dune books in the 70's to 80's (my years of reading them), all water on Arrakis is sequestered by the sand worms to be used in their reproduction cycles and spice is the by-product. I think is comes in later books when Paul Atriedes and his son are the rulers.

[OZtwo]

Before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, people believed that breaking the sound barrier would destroy an aircraft. Some researchers even thought that it was physically impossible for an object like a car or airplane to go supersonic.

[TSBoncompte]

magic mushrooms won't accelerate you to lightspeed, but the in-universe logic is that the hard part is not acceleration, but navigating without crashing into a star or into whatever obstacles exist in the folded warpspace or whatever medium they move through iirc.

[savage]

7:45 even a knife cannot enter this field too quickly. Hand-to-hand combat in Dune involves slowing down the hand before striking the blade

[Emanon...]

Have you even read the books and the appendixed material?
There are some pretty clear explanations given in the lore to all your points, from the effects of spice to shields to the Holtzmann engine on heighliner ships. Even the ecology cycle of worms, oxygen and water is very well described.

[cheetored]

Dune shields don't work against slow moving objects because people were suffocating during tests. Its a programing feature, not a laws of physics one.

[timmo]

I’d just like to point out that “the spacing guild” uses spice for navigation not folding space directly. Apparently folding space is dangerous due to collisions and spice gives the navigators a level of prescience that in turn gives them a chance to “turn the steering wheel” before it’s too late kind of thing.