Science vs Cinema: DUNE

i'm andy howell i'm an astrophysics professor there's a light side and a dark side but i'm also a huge film geek on this show we take a look at the science and movies we celebrate when they get it right it was believable it's something that could actually happen and we school them when they get it wrong let's see what happens when we introduce some martian wind this is science versus cinema [Music] long before there was game of thrones way before there was star wars there was frank herbert's dune a novel about clan struggling for dominance and a sprawling space empire it's one of the most influential novels in science fiction history just take dune's influence on star wars featuring a struggle against an evil empire using bladed weapons the desert planet tatooine is a whole lot like dunes arrakis right down to the great dragons which are basically just dunes sand worms and the powerful drug spice which drives much of the plot in dune even shows up in the star wars universe we'll be sent to the spice mines of kessel or smashed into who knows what in the novel dune has a ton of world building which helps us believe in this enormous interstellar society with complex tribal politics that emphasis on politics over action may be one reason adaptations of dune never quite connected with a huge audience chilean french filmmaker alejandro yodorowski tried to adapt the book in the 1970s could be fantastic but failed then came the wacky david lynch version from 1984. he who controls the spice controls the universe [Music] after that there was a three-part mini-series on the sci-fi channel in the year 2000 in a sequel series in 2003. it was faithful to the source material it is said that they depend on the spice that without it they can't navigate it is said some say too faithful but it didn't have a big enough budget to fully realize the world and the novels [Music] but now we've got a lavish star-studded imax version directed by one of my favorite filmmakers denise vilnov it strikes a great balance between character development world building politics and spectacle villeneuve previously made two of my favorite science fiction films a rival and blade runner 2049. obviously dune is beholden to the fantasy-based source material but vilnav has previously had success grounding the fantastical elements in real and plausible science and technology so let's examine the world of dune [Music] can you have a planet that's entirely desert of course we only have to look at one of our nearest neighbors mars mars today is mostly sand dust and rocks but it wasn't always that way evidence from nasa's martian rovers and orbiters indicates that mars had a warm wet climate and a much denser atmosphere billions of years ago we see evidence of ancient lake beds dried up rivers and minerals that could only have been made in the presence of water some of the water stayed around locked up in polar ice caps and some of it may have gone underground but thanks to nasa's maven spacecraft which is orbiting mars we know some of the water is leaving the planet it turns out mars's lack of a global magnetic field is mainly to blame without that protective shield the sun's solar wind a constant stream of charged particles beats down on mars injecting most the atmosphere and water into space like mars arrakis used to be a lush world filled with life as a desert planet arrakis is done pretty well and seems like a real place to me arrakis is a death trap arrakis is so hot and dry the only way to survive is by wearing a full body garment that recycles almost all bodily moisture these still suits even capture what would be lost by breathing through a tube in the nose i love these little details they're really important in making a fantasy universe seem real still suits get their name from the fact that they distill water on earth we do that by heating water until it boils then we collect the vapor by cooling it and condensing it the impurities don't boil off so the water is purified the closest thing we have the steel suits are spacesuits i know because astronaut mike massimino put me in a spacesuit when we co-hosted the show known universe now you look like an astronaut astronauts use diapers when they're on a spacewalk and a space toilet when they come back inside suction is the key it sounds like suction is very very important but in the apollo era astronauts had to stay in their suits for days the p the astronauts used a device that was basically a condom with a catheter that led to a bag astronauts didn't like to have bags of pee everywhere so they dumped them outside the spacecraft the constellation you ryan buzz aldrin said he was the first person to pee on the moon he boldly went where no one has gone before close encounters of the second kind involved opening a back door in the space suit and taping a bag to uh uranus the whole process took about 45 minutes and was less than perfect the apollo 10 transcript has an astronaut urgently exclaiming give me a napkin quick there's a purge floating through the air now that nasa is thinking about long-term space flight again they're trying to develop new waste removal methods for spacesuits and now that the astronaut core includes women that presents new challenges without getting too graphic they need to think of solutions that make a good seal that are easy to put on and take off spacesuits do have tubes carrying water that run all over your body to cool you down but astronauts have to carry all the water and oxygen they need in a huge backpack to recycle that water you'd need to have something that could distill the water out and that would increase the complexity and cost too much energy the problem of having to bring your water to space has limited the size of crews and their stays on space stations it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars just to send a day's worth of water to space for one astronaut so it was a big breakthrough when nasa invented the environmental control and life support system and installed it on the space station in 2008 that's a system that recycles more than 90 of the water on the international space station including water from showering condensation from the air and even the liquid in toilets it uses a centrifuge to separate the water from impurities we almost have the technology to make still suits they're just impractical and they'd be a lot bulkier that's what makes great science fiction basing something on familiar technology and going just beyond what we can do today the most iconic imagery from dune is the sand worms these are huge creatures that tunnel under the sand posing a constant threat to anyone dumb enough to traverse the desert without taking precautions they're really spectacular and i just love seeing science fiction creatures based somewhat on animals we know from earth but distorted into something plausibly alien they obviously look like worms but they have the overwhelming scale of a whale let's look at those teeth they face inward and many rows like a shark's teeth the fremen have a ceremonial dagger called a kris knife made from the tooth of a sand worm this isn't too different from the weapons many island cultures have made from sharks teeth but how can sand worms travel so fast one clue comes when we see people sinking as the sand worms are surfacing in fact if you run air through sand you can make it behave like a liquid check out this video of people playing in a hot tub filled with sand this is called a fluidized bed and the principle is used in all kinds of industrial applications including combustion the separation of solids freezing vegetables and applying coatings it seems the sand worms somehow vibrate or blow air into the sand on arrakis to make it act like a liquid allowing them to traverse great distances at high speed the filmmakers even took the time to render this this is exactly the kind of detail that turns what could be goofy fantasy into something believable and terrifying sand worms can detect any regular vibrations which puts nearly everyone in the desert in a constant state of peril there are plenty of animals on earth that have similar senses horned desert vipers rest their jaws on the ground that allows them to locate prey by sensing vibrations golden moles don't have eyes but they dip their heads into the sand to sense vibrations from termite mounds lots of species tap their feet in patterns called foot drumming to communicate with each other some spiders can also listen to the vibrations in their webs to sense if they're damaged or if any prey have been trapped assassin bugs even pluck the webs of spiders to emulate trapped creatures then ambush the spider when it investigates that's similar to the thumpers used to attract sand worms in doom the sand worms can pick up on regular patterns of vibrations but not random ones that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective any creature would have a regular pattern you could use to help find it amidst the noise so i love the weird irregular walk the fremen used to evade the sand worms it gives you a sense that this is a real ecosystem rolling over the sands you can see spice in the air the outsiders ravage our lands in front of our eyes at the center of the conflict in dune is spice melange a substance essential for space travel that can only be mined on arrakis it extends life it's psychotropic do you often dream things that happen just as you dream them yes basically magic space cocaine and it gives you the force i love it there's something happening to me prolonged exposure to spice turns your eyes blue and since the fremen live where it's harvested they all have that distinctive appearance on earth the people of the atacama have had their physiology changed by desert life also they can handle levels of arsenic 100 times higher than what's considered safe for the rest of us that's thanks in part to mutations in their genes over the last 7 000 years because at times their only source of fresh water has been high in arsenic this is an extermination spice is so central to the empire in dune that they'll do anything to get it empires have taken over places all over earth to get essential resources too invading middle eastern countries for their oil is an obvious the parallel over back that have been illuminated we're seeing bright flashes going off but if we're talking about analogies to drugs like the spice you would not believe the links the british empire went to get tea and rum for its sailors some of the rarest elements like gold and platinum have been fought over for centuries platinum for example is mostly found in a former colony of the british empire south africa one reason these elements are so scarce is that the astrophysical processes that create them are extraordinarily rare elements we're made of like carbon nitrogen and oxygen are made in stars those element factories are everywhere they're at least a hundred billion stars in the galaxy but only about one in a million stars explodes as a supernova creating a super dense neutron star then two of those really rare stars have to be in a binary system then have to orbit each other so closely that they distort space-time with their extravagant densities causing them to merge creating a kilonova explosion and a black hole that's what it takes to make platinum and some of the heaviest elements on the periodic table and the kicker is modern computers use platinum and the rare earth elements since we use computers to navigate in space we need to extract rare resources to find our way through the cosmos just like in dune for the imperium spice is used by the navigators of the spacing guild to find safe paths between the stars spice is necessary for the navigators to avoid obstacles when they fold space so it's like that part in star wars where han solo says traveling through hyperspace i didn't like dusting crops boy without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and put it in your trip real quick you actually do need precise calculations for space travel but it's for the opposite reason they often show in science fiction space is so empty you'll never hit anything without a ridiculous level of planning two galaxies each full of 100 billion stars can pass right through each other and none of the stars will collide also everything in space is moving super fast stars are orbiting the galaxy at about 130 miles per second so you'd have to shoot to where something will be not where it is right now you need to take into account your own time to get there which depends on your speed path and acceleration according to the books computers are banned in the dune universe because of their negative impact on humanity a criticism that seems remarkably timely today facebook's products harm children stoke division and weaken our democracy so in the dune universe you need people to do complex calculations how much would it cost them traveling all this way for this formality three gill navigators a total of 1.46 million 62 solaris round trip before computers these calculations were done by hand or with calculators nasa had whole rooms of what they called computers but they were mostly women just doing the calculations many of them became nasa's first programmers as shown in the movie hidden figures in the early days of the space program they were switching over to mechanical computers but sometimes the astronauts didn't trust the machines before his first flight john glenn asked catherine johnson to double check the calculations let's get the girl to check the numbers you mean catherine yes sir smart one i mean she says they're good i'm ready to go follow the light you'll find a thought to ready to fly dune has ornithopters or just thopters a craft that uses flapping wings to fly why would you even create such a thing well on earth both jet and helicopter engines are susceptible to damage by dust plus kicked up sand makes it hard to see you have to adapt your aircraft to the conditions on your planet just look at nasa's mars helicopter ingenuity mars atmosphere is only about one percent the density of earth's so that requires a very lightweight aircraft with fast counter-rotating rotors ornithopters also evoke a real throwback sensibility before the invention of the airplane most people were trying to achieve flight by mimicking birds this was talked about through the middle ages and leonardo da vinci even had a design for an ornithopter by the late 1800s toy ornithopters were developed that could actually fly but they weren't big enough to carry people humans just aren't strong enough to use wings although that didn't stop people from trying even after the invention of the airplane people kept the dream of the ornithopter alive the ones powerful enough to carry people either got help with propulsion or didn't get very far the ornithopters in dune have multiple sets of beating wings reminiscent of a dragonfly dragonflies are the best flying insects they can fly higher and farther than any other insect can hover can fly upside down and even fly backwards that's thanks to their four huge wings each of which can be independently controlled so a dragonfly is a great creature to model an aircraft on it gives believable grounding while being fantastical at the same time dude is obviously space fantasy much like star wars the problem with fantasy can be that things seem so made up that there are no stakes but when you base things on real science it elicits a natural sense of understanding and sometimes even fear in the audience without taking them out of the movie at the same time we have to depart just enough from the familiar to feel alien then aviano excels at this balancing act he has an astounding sense of artistry and attention to detail and he knows exactly how to craft a beautiful and amazing world of dune to bring out the sense of awe and wonder in the audience this is only the beginning i really am excited to see what he does with part two there's a reason it takes like eight years to get a doctorate in linguistics it's actually like really complicated i had to talk with physicists i'm like okay right okay i see why that makes sense why should anyone give it flying i don't think you'll be able to use this this is too physics geeky yeah that's the thing i have spent zero time in my life as healing was thinking about how do you talk to an alien i guess the right answer is carefully

Channel: Science vs Cinema

Views: 184,440

Keywords: science, cinema, film, movies

Id: xvqskRG04QA

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 24 2021

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Video Description:

Astrophysicist Dr. Andy Howell takes a look at DUNE and its scientific plausibility and inspirations. Could you have a desert planet like Arrakis? What about the technological feasibility of Stillsuits and evolution of Sandworms? Then all things Spice: enhanced physiology, historical empires pursuing rare resources, and navigating between the stars. And lastly, the cool dragonfly inspired aircraft Ornithopters.