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The desert planet Arrakis in “Dune: Chapter Two” has extreme temperatures and little water.
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Surviving on such a planet requires technology and adaptation.
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Three experts explain what it might be like to live on the planet Dune.
In a distant star system, 20,000 years in the future, a scorching hot planet with arid deserts and little water is home to blue-eyed, semi-nomadic inhabitants called Fremen.
Frank Herbert first described this harsh, fictional world of Arrakis in 1965 with his novel “Dune”, which was recently adapted into a film trilogy. “Dune: Part Two,” the second installment of the trilogy, opened in U.S. theaters on Friday.
The movie was shot in the deserts outside Abu Dhabi, but we were wondering what it would actually take to survive on a real-life Arrakis.
While it may require some creativity and technology, it’s not impossible, according to the scientists we spoke to.
“There are populations that have lived in deserts for centuries, even thousands of years,” Seth Collings Hawkins, a wilderness medicine expert at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, told Business Insider.
What would the planet Dune look like in real life?
“There are many factors that make Earth habitable for humans,” Amy J. Kreykes, MD, an aerospace medicine specialist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, told BI.
This includes everything from the atmosphere to the distance from the sun to available water.
“Everything is uniquely perfect,” he said, “and really deviation from any of these can make other environments a hostile environment for humans.”
Dune’s planet Arrakis is home to giant sandworms, a drug known as spice that aids interstellar travel, and two moons. But it’s not entirely different from Earth.
When “Dune: Part One” was released in 2021, University of Bristol meteorologist Alexander Farnsworth and several other scientists used a weather forecast climate model to simulate conditions on Arrakis.
They entered everything they could find from the Dune Encyclopedia about the planet’s geography, atmosphere, and astronomy.
There were a few places where the team’s model differed from the book’s descriptions, such as the weather at the planet’s poles and in the tropics.
But overall, Farnsworth said he was impressed by the world Herbert created.
“I think what surprised me most was how accurate Frank Herbert was in envisioning a desert world without a physics background or a supercomputer to run any kind of calculations on it,” he said.
“He must have done a tremendous amount of research on various world system components to understand how such a world might function,” he added. In fact, Herbert said he spent six years researching the book.
Based on their calculations, Farnsworth and other researchers found that living on Arrakis might be possible, but probably wouldn’t be that pleasant.
Getting rid of lack of water
There are no oceans, lakes or even small puddles on the surface of Planet Arrakis. It goes without saying that this is bad news for people.
“There’s the rule of threes,” said Hawkins. The human body can survive for about three minutes without oxygen, about three days without water, and about three weeks without food. “This will be the point where your body will start to break down,” he said.
To survive such dry conditions in Dune, the fictional Fremen wear clothing called stillsuits, which capture the body’s sweat and other bodily fluids and turn them into drinkable water.
However, this concept is not entirely science fiction.
Hawkins called space “the ultimate water-deficient environment”; That’s why the International Space Station’s toilets convert almost 85% of astronauts’ urine into drinking water.
We argue that moisture recovery is essential in environments where a readily available external source is not available. But as important as water is on Arrakis, the real killer is heat.
“You’d probably get heatstroke before you die of dehydration,” Hawkins said.
Survive in extreme temperatures
Unlike the book, Farnsworth’s scientific model of a real-life Arrakis found that the tropics were more hospitable than the polar regions because temperatures were milder year-round.
Temperatures at the poles ranged from 158 degrees Fahrenheit in summer to -76 degrees Fahrenheit in winter. Meanwhile, temperatures in the tropics will range from 56 to 113 degrees.
“For this reason [at the poles] “On a real-life Arrakis, it’s not just heat stress that creatures have to deal with, but also cold stress,” he said.
Therefore, if you could choose, you would choose to live near the equator on Arrakis.
“The most feared consequence of being outside in this environment is heat stroke, which literally heats up the brain,” said Hawkins. The body’s temperature would rise to 106 or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, which is higher than the fever.
“You definitely don’t travel during the day,” he said. Everyone would find shelter until temperatures began to cool at night. If you need to go out during the day, you’ll need something similar to a stillsuit.
“It seems truly paradoxical [to cover yourself]“But we now know that much of the problem is radiation and exposure to heat from the sun,” Hawkins said.
Some fabrics are both breathable and good at reflecting heat. Integrating heat-conducting materials into clothing could help, but some type of internal fan or air conditioner would still be needed, Hawkins said.
“Through technology, we can actually add tools to help extend the time we spend in the sun or in the heat with fewer ill effects,” said Hawkins.
Survive in the atmosphere
“Human needs are very specific” when it comes to the composition of the atmosphere, Kreykes said.
The atmosphere on Arrakis is similar to Earth. It has a similar pressure, slightly less nitrogen (74.32% compared to about 78% on our planet), and slightly more oxygen (23.58% compared to Earth’s 21%).
Despite the similarities, people may still have an adjustment period.
“Anytime you start mixing the atmosphere and changing those parameters, that has the potential to have significant human impacts,” Kreykes said. said. “Any deviation from a human habitability perspective would need to be examined very, very closely.”
Arrakis also has slightly less carbon dioxide than Earth, which may affect plant growth. This will be another challenge, along with limited water resources.
A glimpse into a future Earth?
While learning to tame giant sandworms is a challenge Earth will never have to face, some parts of our planet aren’t all that different from Arrakis.
For example, the Sonoran Desert along the Mexico-U.S. border recently reached 177 degrees Fahrenheit, one of the highest surface temperatures on record.
Arizona, New Mexico and California have faced drought or water shortages in recent years.
As the Earth continues to warm in the face of climate change, extreme temperatures and water scarcity will continue to affect not only humans but also plants and animals worldwide.
Part of the reason for the popularity of “Dune” and similar speculative fiction is that we can see elements of our own future in it, Hawkins said, “and I think this story gives us that message.”
Read the original article on Business Insider