Could We Recreate The Technology Of Dune In Real Life?

First things first: let’s take a look at the spice melange. It is, after all, the main commodity of the Dune universe that drives the story forward. The spice is a drug, found only on the planet of Arrakis, which imbues its users with remarkably expanded mental capacities and increased lifespans.

Well, ignoring the superhuman qualities of the spice for a moment, we can say that there is a real-world historical comparison to be made here. In the Americas long ago, before the land was colonized by Europeans, the coca leaf was incredibly important to the Incas. And, as Dr. Carol Hart noted in her book The Science Of Dune, it gave rise to social relations not unlike those formed by the spice

As for the physical effects induced by the coca leaf, the similarities with the spice aren’t exactly there. In Dune, melange helped to create a group of highly evolved humans known as the Guild Navigators, whose bodies and minds have been radically mutated by their prolonged exposure to the spice.

The Bene Gesserit also ingest the spice, as it sharpens their minds to the extent that they can predict the future. Obviously we don’t have any substance on Earth with the power to see the future and undertake interstellar space travel, but, in a more moderate sense, could we, say, develop drugs capable of enhancing our minds?

In reality, there are big concerns about the usage of nootropic drugs. One study from 2020 demonstrated that some nootropics contain chemicals that haven’t ever been green-lighted for pharmaceutical use. As Dr. Pieter Cohen, the author of that study, wrote, “Use of these supplements poses potentially serious health risks.”

The spice is an essential part of Paul’s journey towards becoming the “chosen one,” but it isn’t the only factor in play. His very existence, after all, is a result of the multi-generational Bene Gesserit breeding program.

Well, gene-editing technology is developing fast. In 2018 a maverick scientist in China named He Jiankui facilitated the birth of the first ever gene-edited human infants. The babies were twin girls, both of whom were born with a resistance to HIV — a virus with which their father was afflicted. He managed to achieve this feat thanks to a technique known as CRISPR-Cas9.

The ethics of genetic editing of this kind is murky at best, of course. As a matter of fact, He was thrown in jail for his role in editing the genes of those babies. He’d broken Chinese laws prohibiting such work from ever taking place on human embryos.

Professor Jennifer Doudna helped to develop the CRISPR technique, receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it in 2020. She’s very much in the know when it comes to gene-editing, and she believes we’ll see more and more of it quite soon.

We obviously can’t say gene-editing of this kind will produce a superhuman at the level of Paul Atreides, but Dune is fiction. We have to take it with a pinch of salt, but, on the other hand, certain enhancements can reasonably be expected should gene-editing techniques develop along expected lines.

Angela Saini has written a book called Superior: The Return Of Race Science, in which she expresses her great doubts about whether or not we should be pursuing these ends. She explained to Science Focus, “The problem with gene-editing is that genes don’t work in a simplistic one-to-one way.”

The desert planet of Arrakis is an incredibly harsh environment for humans to inhabit, yet they manage it anyway. The planet’s indigenous people, the Fremen, use tools and tech that make living there possible, but could similar innovations help us to make our planetary neighbor Mars survivable?

According to Dune lore, the sandworms sustain themselves on a diet of sand and little organisms called sand plankton. It doesn’t sound like much, but it works for them, and, as they digest their grub, they release oxygen. It’s this oxygen produced by the worms that imbues Arrakis with its human-sustaining atmosphere.

On our planet, of course, we have an atmosphere we can survive in because of the process of photosynthesis present in plants and certain bacteria. Oxygen is a byproduct of photosynthesis: without it, Earth wouldn’t have the oxygen necessary to sustain animal life.

Speaking of the GOE to Science Focus, Professor Gary King said, “This culminated in an atmosphere that could support metazoans [multicellular organisms] around 540 million years ago, and then us somewhat later.” Now, this is obviously very interesting in its own terms, but you might be wondering what it has to do with Dune?

An essential part of photosynthesis is water, without which it wouldn’t be possible. But on Mars, evidence of water was discovered by the Curiosity rover in 2012 — so Dr. King’s plan remains possible. The issue, though, is that much of that water is said to be frozen. To combat that, factories capable of producing gasses to warm Mars and melt the ice would need to be established.

Among those challenges is the fact that the Sun emits high-energy radiation, which is believed to be the reason why the atmosphere that once existed on Mars was obliterated. Earth has a magnetic field that’s capable of repelling the Sun’s radiation, but that’s not the case on Mars.

Dr. King has given that a lot of thought, as you might have guessed, and he thinks it’s not an insurmountable problem. He believes that, if the photosynthesizing bacteria are able to set up a sufficient biosphere on the red planet, it could work.

So, the worms make the air on Arrakis breathable for the Fremen, but they also rely on their own tech to survive. Their stillsuits, for one thing, mean they can roam the dry, sandy lands of their planet. This outfit basically captures all the water the wearer excretes and recycles it.

The character Liet Kynes explains the value of a stillsuit to the person wearing it, noting, “With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won’t lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day.”

Obviously on the International Space Station (ISS) there isn’t a natural water source into which its inhabitants can dip. The water on board was launched there from Earth, which isn’t what you might call a cheap process. That means every drop of water is precious, just as it is on Arrakis.

The system used on the ISS is reportedly capable of recycling as much as 93 percent of the water its astronauts use. That means water that’s in the air, not to mention the water they excrete through sweating and breathing, and their waste water from washing.

The thought of drinking water you know came from your own waste is obviously pretty horrible. But in reality, the treatment process is such that the water is actually more pure than anything we might expect to come from our kitchen taps. That might say a lot about our tap water, but it also shows the effectiveness of the ISS system.

In 2018 a study was published laying out the results of an experiment in this very vein. It took place in Saudi Arabia, where a sort of gel was used to absorb moisture from the atmosphere. This collected water could potentially then be used for drinking.

One of the more striking technologies from the latest Dune movies is the ornithopter. A flying machine with wings, it’s a striking sight in Villeneuve’s two films. The ornithopters look akin to dragonflies when they’re up in the air, but is that a viable way of achieving flight in reality?

The experts in question here came from the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, and they posted their thoughts on the subject on the institution’s website. “Aeronautical engineers have nearly perfected the design of fixed-wings structure,” their post reads, “but with a flapping wing, the wing is no longer fixed and is in a constant state of stress.”

You might presume that the limits of a flapping wing structure would mean that no flying machine that utilizes such a design has ever been created. In actual fact, there are flapping wing flying machines out there. For one thing, experts at Harvard University have produced something called the RoboBee.

Beyond the RoboBee, there are other projects that have managed to create flying machines a little like the ornithopter. As well as secretive schemes by governments and militaries, the University of Toronto’s Aerospace Project also tried to develop one. Unfortunately, in acknowledgement of the limitations of the machine, the effort was abandoned. 

Another nifty bit of tech in Dune is the Holtzman shield, a sort of protective forcefield that fighters can deploy to protect themselves. If a fast-moving projectile is fired in the direction of the wearer, it is deflected. A weakness is when the shield encounters something slow-moving, like someone wielding a knife.

The development of a real-life forcefield is limited by some basic scientific facts. Four fundamental forces of nature are known to exist: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. The weak and strong forces exist — as the names suggest — within the nuclei of atoms.

That leaves us with electromagnetism for the development of a forcefield, but here we may have some potential. At least, that’s what a physicist from the University of Surrey thinks. Professor Jim Al-Khalili thinks electromagnetism, given that it’s unquestionably stronger than gravity and has a longer range than the weak and strong forces, could be the answer.

According to Dr. Al-Khalili, a projectile could be charged by blasting it with particles of antimatter known as positrons. These have the same mass as the electrons that orbit atoms, but they have a different electrical charge. When positrons and electrons collide, they annihilate one another. It’s all very technical, but the boffin tried to break it down for Science Focus.

Even though this does seem like a conceivable technological development, it’s probably fair to suggest that we won’t be seeing it for quite some time. In other words, don’t expect soldiers to be wearing their very own personal forcefields in battle any time soon. Having said that, electric armor intended to protect battle tanks is very much on the cards.

Military analyst James Bingham explained how it would work to Science Focus. “When a metal projectile penetrates the outer layer and impacts on the second,” he said, “it closes the circuit and allows a massive amount of power and energy to be dumped into the projectile. This destroys the projectile or offsets its kinetic energy and penetrative effects sufficiently to mitigate its destructive impact.”

In terms of the more lofty technological achievements in Dune, interstellar space travel is among the most impressive. That’s achieved by the guild navigators, with help from the spice “folding space,” which is achieved through a combination of technology and expanded consciousness. But is that doable for real? According to former NASA scientist Dr. Kevin Grazier, it’s possible.

Dune is far from the only sci-fi epic to depict laser weaponry; it’s a staple of the genre. If anything, lasers aren’t seen as much in Dune as they are in other sci-fi worlds. That’s because, in the reality Herbert created, the laser beams from such weapons can cause terrible explosions when they hit forcefield shields.

In Dune we have lasguns, which are directed-energy firearms in the same vein as other laser guns from other sci-fi worlds. For whatever reason, these weapons appear in stories time after time, but what about in reality? Could we ever see the development of anything like them?

In the middle of March 2024 the United Kingdom unveiled a new actual laser weapon, which it claimed could fire off a projectile for just $13. If true, that would lead to savings of tens of millions of dollars. The weapon system is called DragonFire, and it’s already been demonstrated in action.

All in all, it seems the world envisioned by Frank Herbert isn’t totally beyond the realms of possibility. Of course, a lot of the technology and the exotic abilities of certain humans within the story are pretty wild, but, at the same time, a lot of it is conceivable.