Dune's desert planet Arrakis is credible and people could live on it, so says science
As with many science fiction novels and films, you can't help but apply reality to a completely made up world put in front of you.
And that's exactly what scientists did with the Dune franchise and the planet that the majority of the films take place on - Arrakis.
They took it one step further, though, and actually modelled if people could live on the desert planet with incredibly harsh living conditions. The result? Surprising, to say the least.
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Dune: Part Two was released at the beginning of March to universal critical acclaim, with a star-studded ensemble cast including Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgard and Javier Bardem.
Just don't mention the popcorn buckets.
It's the second of a two-part adaption of the 1965 novel Dune, by Frank Herbert, and serves as a direct sequel to 2021's Dune.
The first film in the Dune universe won six Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects.
Both films are set on the fiction plant of Arrakis, a desert-like world that is mined for a highly valuable natural resource called 'spice'.
They follow Paul Atreides (Chamalet) as his noble House Atreides is plunged into a war for the planet in a galactic battle centred around control of the resource.
And while the novel and films are works of pure imagination, the planet of Arrakis - which inspired none other than Luke Skywalker's Tatooine home world in Star Wars - is one that scientists say could exist.
That's according to Alexander Farnsworth, Michael Farnsworth, and Sebastan Steinig, three climate scientists at the University of Bristol.
Following the release of Dune three years ago, Farnsworth took it upon himself to simulate the desert planet to see if people could actually live in the harsh conditions endured by Arrakis' native people, the Fremen.
"We are scientists with specific expertise in climate modelling, so we simulated the climate of Arrakis to find out. We wanted to know if the physics and environment of such a world would stack up against a real climate model," they wrote in The Conversation.
When the trio had finished their modelling for a real-life Arrakis, they were amazed to see that when creating the planet for his novel, Herbert 'had envisioned an environment that for the most part meets expectations'.
The research said that while a real-life Arrakis would be 'habitable, albeit inhospitable'.
They said that the mid-latitudes (think its equivalent of Earth's equator) where most people on Arrakis live are the worst places to live when it comes to heat.
"In the lowlands, monthly average temperatures are often above 50-60°C, with maximum daily temperatures even higher. Such temperatures are deadly for humans," they said.
This echoes one scene in Dune, where there's talk of needing to stay indoors and shutting blast doors because it's going to be too hot outside.
There's less carbon dioxide on Arrakis compared to Earth but absolutely loads more ozone. This would mean a much warmer atmosphere with potential toxicity for humans.
Farnsworth said: "Arrakis would certainly have a much warmer atmosphere, even though it has less CO2 than Earth today."
The long and short of is it that if humanity was ever to really settle on a planet like this, it'd need the kind of advanced technology seen in the films combined with off-world support for resources, given how barren Arrakis is.
Thankfully the existence of gigantic sandworms is something that Herbert very much created out of the brilliance of his imagination.
Topics: TV and Film, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Science, Space, Environment
Tom Earnshaw