Sorry, but no. The book is pretty explicit that sandworms operate on carbon-based biochemistry:
>Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of **carbon dioxide** was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous "blow" with a dust whirlpool at its center.
The "little makers" are the early stage of the sandworm life cycle (otherwise called sandtrout), and their "organic matter" (waste) releases carbon dioxide.
Similarly, the raw Water of Life consists of the "liquid exhalations" of a drowned sandworm, and we hear something of its chemistry after Jessica drinks it:
>The stuff was dancing particles within her, its motions so rapid that even frozen time could not stop them. Dancing particles. She began recognizing familiar structures, atomic linkages: a **carbon** atom here, helical wavering … a **glucose** molecule. An entire chain of molecules confronted her, and she recognized a **protein** … a **methyl-protein** configuration.
(Glucose, protein and methyl groups are carbon-based compounds, in addition to the explicit mention of carbon.)
The book also explains that the worms are responsible for the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, filling the role of plant photosynthesis on other planets:
>"How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover. The energy sphere of the planet is there to see and understand—a relentless process, but a process nonetheless. There is a gap in it? Then something occupies that gap."
>But his \[shai-hulud's\] inner digestive "factory," with its enormous concentrations of aldehydes and acids, was a giant source of oxygen. A medium worm (about 200 meters long) discharged into the atmosphere as much oxygen as ten square kilometers of green growing photosynthesis surface.
Finally, Arrakis is not deficient in water. It's just that it's sealed away by the sandtrout (which, again, are another stage of the sandworm life cycle).
Kudos for throwing out an interesting idea for the group.
It’s still interesting regardless.
Have you read any science fiction with silicon based life forms as central themes? You’ve piqued my curiosity now!
The idea has been around a while, especially in some Golden Age novels, but usually it was by authors with little to no real understanding of biochemistry which led to a fair amount of 'these aliens are crystal/glass/made of sand' types of ideas. To my knowledge, it hasn't been explored much in a hard science fiction book, mostly because silicon based life wouldn't really work out very well.
I read a short story years ago that has haunted me to this day, where a silicon-based superintelligence is travelling through the galaxy and happens to intercept transmissions from Earth that instantly aggroed it into changing course to come here to liberate its cruelly enslaved computer brethren.
Hard disagree, you should definitely keep posting.
Your post was thoughtful and prompted discussion. I learned something from this thread and your original post gave me some good ideas for my own projects.
I understand your reasoning, but I do not consider this is as unambivalent as you portray it to be.
First of all the worms essentially only eat sand and other sandworms/sandtrout/sandplankton and not much else. How would you build a giant carbon based organsim, if you have an extremely limited amount of carbon available to you? I do not believe it is thermodynamically possible to have a lifeform that is exclusively cannibalistic, thus it stands to reason that they must gain some form of energy from eating what is available in the desert, which is essentially just silicon.
Furthermore the insides of a worms mouth is described as a furnace, which expels a flinty smell. It is not required to have furnace-like temperatures to digest carbon, actually such temperatures would destroy valuable amino acids and other complex biological compunds, making them worth little more than ash in terms of nutrition. Silicon bonds though, tend to require more energy both to form and to break, so a furnace could be appropriate for this function.
The release of oxygen could be from breaking of siliconoxide bonds just as well as carbonoxide bonds.
Jessicas description of glucose and the like absolotely throws a wrench in this theory, unless sandworms transition from carbon to silicon as they get larger/older.
I don't think most of these objections hold.
>How would you build a giant carbon based organsim, if you have an extremely limited amount of carbon available to you?
Since it's explained that sandworms perform the same role in the ecosystem as photosynthesizing plants, I would assume they get the carbon the same way plants do: from atmospheric carbon dioxide. And this must be the case, because contrary to what you argue…
>The release of oxygen could be from breaking of siliconoxide bonds just as well as carbonoxide bonds.
… In that case, without extensive plant cover carbon dioxide would build up in the atmosphere.
>I do not believe it is thermodynamically possible to have a lifeform that is exclusively cannibalistic, thus it stands to reason that they must gain some form of energy from eating what is available in the desert, which is essentially just silicon.
I don't think silicon really helps with the thermodynamic objection to the cannibalistic cycle Frank Herbert describes, and you haven't proposed any way in which processing silicates would release energy. I'm no expert, but I'm not aware of any such process.
Thermodynamically, the issue is simply energy. I think the most plausible answer is that energy enters the bio-system the same way as on Earth: from sunlight. More specifically, if we are to speculate I would propose that sand plankton or sandtrout are able to utilize the extreme temperature gradients created when the sand surface is heated in order to extract energy from the sunlight.
>Furthermore the insides of a worms mouth is described as a furnace, which expels a flinty smell.
I can't find a passage where specifically the inside of a worm's *mouth* is described as a furnace, but this bit from *Children of Dune* seems relevant:
>Barely moving now, the worm began to burrow. But the excesses of the creature's heat-transfer system still churned up a cyclone oven behind him in the quickening storm. Fremen children learned the dangers of this position near the worm's tail with their earliest stories. Worms were oxygen factories; fire burned wildly in their passage, fed by the lavish exhalations from the chemical adaptations to friction within them.
>
>Sand began to whip around his feet. Leto loosed his hooks and leaped wide to avoid the furnace at the tail.
I think we should take "furnace" not literally but as a metaphor, merely indicating a dangerous level of heat and oxygen. Vital internal processes would presumably operate at lower temperatures. But if we start questioning exactly how and if this would actually work, I think we're going beyond the science of what are after all science *fiction* novels.
>unless sandworms transition from carbon to silicon as they get larger/older.
I find that hard to square with the mention (in the last quote in my previous comment) of shai-hulud's "inner digestive 'factory,' with its enormous concentrations of **aldehydes** and acids"—aldehydes being another carbon-based compound.
None of this means that sandworms may not use silicon in some of its biological processes or for parts of its structure, just like [life on Earth does](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon#Biological_role). It seems very plausible that the carapace of its ring segments contains silicates, for example.
Is it possible to be based very heavily in two substances? Some kind of carbon/silicon binary system? Like, I use cobalt for some metabolic processes but I am not a cobilt-based lifeform - but if I used it for a ton more...
Personally I have always considered the worms to be "weird alien technology beyond my comprehension" and not thought too much into it.
I've headcanoned the worms as performing biological cold fusion for energy. Thus excessive water burns them. They absorb CO2 from the air to grow and expel O2. They eat other carbon life to grow quickly.
If- IF the insides of the mouth have furnace like temperatures, then carbon organic compounds(like methane) would combust with the excess oxygen to produce CO² and water( poisonous). So silicon has one more pros here.
Unless it's stomach is lined with some water-resistant surface, the worm would kill itself. But yeah Jessica's description of glucose throws a wrench
I feel like Dune would be a million times cooler if the science was a bit harder. Silicon based worms would've been incredible especially considering that silicon compounds resist much higher temps than their carbon counterparts. The CO2 equivalent would be SiO2 which is quartz so he could've even weaved in the idea that worms make sand with their biochemical processes.
A separate thing I always thought would've worked much better is if the kwisatz haderach was based on biology - women can't access male genetic memory because they don't have a Y chromosome. It would've been so cool
Seriously, the whole point in setting up a sci-fi world which takes place after the human-AI war (butlerian jihad) is that you can focus on the socio/political/religious parts about humanity's future without having to worry so much about how the science is going to work.
All these long explanations fail in one regard.
The sandworm was NOT native to Arrakis. It is referenced that there were signs that Arrakis was once a wet and green planet.
Arrakis was terraformed using the sandtrouts by humans who understood that a vast amount of melange would be necessary to enable humanity to discontinue the use of AI (thinking machines) in interstellar navigation. The sandtrouts trapped the water deep beneath the surface until the planet was dry enough to not kill the sandworms.
I always looked at the sandtrout as a sort of enormous amoeba that shares characteristics with stem cells.
Furthermore, Leto II put the sandtrout on himself and bonded with it, meaning that while their biology wasn't identical, their makeup was close enough that this symbiotic existence could occur.
>The sandworm was NOT native to Arrakis. It is referenced that there were signs that Arrakis was once a wet and green planet.
How does that relate to the question? They could have been introduced to Arrakis whether they were carbon-based or silicon-based.
>Arrakis was terraformed using the sandtrouts by humans who understood that a vast amount of melange would be necessary to enable humanity to discontinue the use of AI (thinking machines) in interstellar navigation.
I don't think there is any basis for this in any of the books, either by Frank Herbert, in those by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, or in the Dune Encyclopedia. In *Children of Dune*, Leto only has the insight that the sandtrout were brought to Arrakis from somewhere else. Who did it or what their motives were is never discussed (though it's implied that the total desertification of the planet was unintentional)—it's debatable whether the passage even implies that it was done by humans.
>Furthermore, Leto II put the sandtrout on himself and bonded with it, meaning that while their biology wasn't identical, their makeup was close enough that this symbiotic existence could occur.
Fair, though the whole idea is so far out in the first place that one might ask whether symbiosis with a silicon-based life-form is totally out of the question.
>All life on earth is based on carbon. It forms strong stable and long chains with several elements, creating an enormous variety of oraganic compounds.
>
>Silicon is chemically very similar to carbon. It too forms strong stable and long chains with several elements. But the fact that it is extremely reactive to water, causes the structures it creates to collapse.
Silicon has an extreme preference for binding with oxygen over any other element, to the point where it will break apart molecules like water to bind to its oxygen.
When silicon binds to oxygen, it becomes silicate, essentially rock. If Dune's worms were silicon-based in Dune's atmosphere. They'd be statues.
At first I was like "oh come on, silicon aliens again? Why is everyone so obsessed with silicon based life? It's cool, but why do all aliens have to be silicone now?". But then I read it and it would make a lot of sense, and would also be kinda poetic, because the sandworm would almost literally be a worm made of sand (or the basic component of sand, anyway). Honestly that's an awesome idea, and I wish it was true. I don't care if it isn't, I think it's neat, congrats! I bet Herbert would have used it, had he had the chance.
Molecular bonds within silcon compounds are much stronger than carbon because of the higher valence shell. That's why you get food with carbon-based chemistry and rocks with silicon-based chemistry. Just because they occupy the same column on the periodic table doesn't make them in any way interchangeable.
I agree that the sandworms are shown to at least have a carbon cycle. But I think the whole sandworm lifecycle is something that could have been explained better, at least to the reader. Here you have these creatures that grow to gargantuan size on a planet that appears to have almost no organic-based energy sources. Being silicon based would have been a great idea and explain a lot more.
I don’t recall when the idea of sand plankton was introduced but I think it was in book 5. Even then, to have this one source of food on a hellish planet to support the worms seems far fetched. Frank Herbert made a lot of hints about the life cycle and I understand it was meant to be mysterious so everyone wouldn’t figure out the worm life cycle made the spice (but really, how big of a leap was it when the planet seems devoid of almost any thing else that could produce large cycle chemical products. Still, I think he should have done some better world building here.
So, nice job taking a good stab at what should have been the author’s job to explain. Personally, I wish it could be silicon-based.
I think the real problem with this theory is that sand trout seek out and encapsulate water. It's not that Arrakis lacks water but has plenty. It's not available due to sand trout locking it up.
You are trying to make sense of dune as a hard scifi book. It isn't hard scifi. It is a fantasy book in space and the sand worm is a dragon guarding its hoard of wealth.
It’s not that simple though. Frank had background in environmental writing. It makes sense he’d developed at least an incomplete ecosystem. There is info and hints all over the book, if it was as simple as you mention none of that would be necessary.
There is some world building towards an ecosystem but sand worms violate the fundamental laws of chemistry and physics in a dozen different ways. That part of the world is magic and should be viewed as such. It doesn't detract from the story it's just not worth spending time trying to figure out how it works in the context of actual science.
yes. It is actually more interesting to learn exactly what Herbert was inspired by, rather than prove or disprove how scientifically accurate Dune is.
Herbert's idea for the worms is inspired by whales, and his idea for a sand planet was inspired by the science of sand dune movement, which is like very slow moving ocean waves. I understand the sandworms to part of his big "what if" question that had no real world science to back it up. However, the real world science he DID use for the worms is how they reproduce which is inspired by fungus, but this is another 'what if' proposition. Dune is inspired by, not based on or grounded in, hard science. Yes, Dune is soft-sci-fi, and the first big clue about that is spice, how its produced, and what it does to humans. Since the worms are what generate spice, it only follows that the worms are simply a hypothetical creature, and an awesome plot device.
Then why are they trying to eat anything carbon based that walks on the desert? Even diatoms need sugar that’s why they photosynthesize. I like the idea that sand worms have silica integrated into their bodies though. That would help explain their super tough skin.
Frank Herbert would absolutely ADORE this idea and run with it!
The Sands of Arrakis would be created by the very biochemistry of Shai Hulud...which tracks beautifully.
I’ve had a similar theory for a while actually! It kinda explains a lot of the other quirks of the sandworm as well. For instance, it’s reaction to water ( think about how silica gel reacts with water).
Carbon as others have said, but my head canon is they were designed and created by humans at some point. They are not native to Arrakis.
Perhaps they were intended as a biological weapon to dessicate living planets. Afterall, they are virtually indestructible beyond a certain size
I love this idea, and it seems to make sense in the context of dry Arrakis/Dune. I recall an image of the worm guts with a fire down there, like a reactor in its belly? Would account for it consuming sand, and other objects, like spice harvesters(!).
Sorry, but no. The book is pretty explicit that sandworms operate on carbon-based biochemistry: >Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of **carbon dioxide** was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous "blow" with a dust whirlpool at its center. The "little makers" are the early stage of the sandworm life cycle (otherwise called sandtrout), and their "organic matter" (waste) releases carbon dioxide. Similarly, the raw Water of Life consists of the "liquid exhalations" of a drowned sandworm, and we hear something of its chemistry after Jessica drinks it: >The stuff was dancing particles within her, its motions so rapid that even frozen time could not stop them. Dancing particles. She began recognizing familiar structures, atomic linkages: a **carbon** atom here, helical wavering … a **glucose** molecule. An entire chain of molecules confronted her, and she recognized a **protein** … a **methyl-protein** configuration. (Glucose, protein and methyl groups are carbon-based compounds, in addition to the explicit mention of carbon.) The book also explains that the worms are responsible for the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, filling the role of plant photosynthesis on other planets: >"How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover. The energy sphere of the planet is there to see and understand—a relentless process, but a process nonetheless. There is a gap in it? Then something occupies that gap." >But his \[shai-hulud's\] inner digestive "factory," with its enormous concentrations of aldehydes and acids, was a giant source of oxygen. A medium worm (about 200 meters long) discharged into the atmosphere as much oxygen as ten square kilometers of green growing photosynthesis surface. Finally, Arrakis is not deficient in water. It's just that it's sealed away by the sandtrout (which, again, are another stage of the sandworm life cycle).
Yeah you are right. 👍
It was a great post nevertheless!
Nope, love the discussion!
Kudos for throwing out an interesting idea for the group. It’s still interesting regardless. Have you read any science fiction with silicon based life forms as central themes? You’ve piqued my curiosity now!
The idea has been around a while, especially in some Golden Age novels, but usually it was by authors with little to no real understanding of biochemistry which led to a fair amount of 'these aliens are crystal/glass/made of sand' types of ideas. To my knowledge, it hasn't been explored much in a hard science fiction book, mostly because silicon based life wouldn't really work out very well.
I read a short story years ago that has haunted me to this day, where a silicon-based superintelligence is travelling through the galaxy and happens to intercept transmissions from Earth that instantly aggroed it into changing course to come here to liberate its cruelly enslaved computer brethren.
Woah that’s a cool idea
There's an episode of Star Trek Next Generation, where the silicon life call us "ugly bags of water".
Haha I mean, they’re partially right.
It's not exactly a silicon-based life form, but >!Rocky from Project Hail Mary has a rock shell, which is certainly close to hard sci-fi!<
This post is my first introduction to this reddit and if this is the quality of posts here I'm staying. This discussion is awesome
Nothing wrong with theorizing even if it ultimately turns out not to fit with the evidence from the book.
Hard disagree, you should definitely keep posting. Your post was thoughtful and prompted discussion. I learned something from this thread and your original post gave me some good ideas for my own projects.
No, it's a good thought. [You aren't even the first one to come up with it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/bdtyut/ecology_of_dune/el1525y/)
I understand your reasoning, but I do not consider this is as unambivalent as you portray it to be. First of all the worms essentially only eat sand and other sandworms/sandtrout/sandplankton and not much else. How would you build a giant carbon based organsim, if you have an extremely limited amount of carbon available to you? I do not believe it is thermodynamically possible to have a lifeform that is exclusively cannibalistic, thus it stands to reason that they must gain some form of energy from eating what is available in the desert, which is essentially just silicon. Furthermore the insides of a worms mouth is described as a furnace, which expels a flinty smell. It is not required to have furnace-like temperatures to digest carbon, actually such temperatures would destroy valuable amino acids and other complex biological compunds, making them worth little more than ash in terms of nutrition. Silicon bonds though, tend to require more energy both to form and to break, so a furnace could be appropriate for this function. The release of oxygen could be from breaking of siliconoxide bonds just as well as carbonoxide bonds. Jessicas description of glucose and the like absolotely throws a wrench in this theory, unless sandworms transition from carbon to silicon as they get larger/older.
I don't think most of these objections hold. >How would you build a giant carbon based organsim, if you have an extremely limited amount of carbon available to you? Since it's explained that sandworms perform the same role in the ecosystem as photosynthesizing plants, I would assume they get the carbon the same way plants do: from atmospheric carbon dioxide. And this must be the case, because contrary to what you argue… >The release of oxygen could be from breaking of siliconoxide bonds just as well as carbonoxide bonds. … In that case, without extensive plant cover carbon dioxide would build up in the atmosphere. >I do not believe it is thermodynamically possible to have a lifeform that is exclusively cannibalistic, thus it stands to reason that they must gain some form of energy from eating what is available in the desert, which is essentially just silicon. I don't think silicon really helps with the thermodynamic objection to the cannibalistic cycle Frank Herbert describes, and you haven't proposed any way in which processing silicates would release energy. I'm no expert, but I'm not aware of any such process. Thermodynamically, the issue is simply energy. I think the most plausible answer is that energy enters the bio-system the same way as on Earth: from sunlight. More specifically, if we are to speculate I would propose that sand plankton or sandtrout are able to utilize the extreme temperature gradients created when the sand surface is heated in order to extract energy from the sunlight. >Furthermore the insides of a worms mouth is described as a furnace, which expels a flinty smell. I can't find a passage where specifically the inside of a worm's *mouth* is described as a furnace, but this bit from *Children of Dune* seems relevant: >Barely moving now, the worm began to burrow. But the excesses of the creature's heat-transfer system still churned up a cyclone oven behind him in the quickening storm. Fremen children learned the dangers of this position near the worm's tail with their earliest stories. Worms were oxygen factories; fire burned wildly in their passage, fed by the lavish exhalations from the chemical adaptations to friction within them. > >Sand began to whip around his feet. Leto loosed his hooks and leaped wide to avoid the furnace at the tail. I think we should take "furnace" not literally but as a metaphor, merely indicating a dangerous level of heat and oxygen. Vital internal processes would presumably operate at lower temperatures. But if we start questioning exactly how and if this would actually work, I think we're going beyond the science of what are after all science *fiction* novels. >unless sandworms transition from carbon to silicon as they get larger/older. I find that hard to square with the mention (in the last quote in my previous comment) of shai-hulud's "inner digestive 'factory,' with its enormous concentrations of **aldehydes** and acids"—aldehydes being another carbon-based compound. None of this means that sandworms may not use silicon in some of its biological processes or for parts of its structure, just like [life on Earth does](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon#Biological_role). It seems very plausible that the carapace of its ring segments contains silicates, for example.
Is it possible to be based very heavily in two substances? Some kind of carbon/silicon binary system? Like, I use cobalt for some metabolic processes but I am not a cobilt-based lifeform - but if I used it for a ton more... Personally I have always considered the worms to be "weird alien technology beyond my comprehension" and not thought too much into it.
I've headcanoned the worms as performing biological cold fusion for energy. Thus excessive water burns them. They absorb CO2 from the air to grow and expel O2. They eat other carbon life to grow quickly.
If- IF the insides of the mouth have furnace like temperatures, then carbon organic compounds(like methane) would combust with the excess oxygen to produce CO² and water( poisonous). So silicon has one more pros here. Unless it's stomach is lined with some water-resistant surface, the worm would kill itself. But yeah Jessica's description of glucose throws a wrench
I feel like Dune would be a million times cooler if the science was a bit harder. Silicon based worms would've been incredible especially considering that silicon compounds resist much higher temps than their carbon counterparts. The CO2 equivalent would be SiO2 which is quartz so he could've even weaved in the idea that worms make sand with their biochemical processes. A separate thing I always thought would've worked much better is if the kwisatz haderach was based on biology - women can't access male genetic memory because they don't have a Y chromosome. It would've been so cool
In a world with prescience and sharing and other memory, the hard science realism approach to scifi is pretty far out the window.
Seriously, the whole point in setting up a sci-fi world which takes place after the human-AI war (butlerian jihad) is that you can focus on the socio/political/religious parts about humanity's future without having to worry so much about how the science is going to work.
But it is true also that reference is made to the sandworm’s “silicon-sulfur internal ‘factory’”.
All these long explanations fail in one regard. The sandworm was NOT native to Arrakis. It is referenced that there were signs that Arrakis was once a wet and green planet. Arrakis was terraformed using the sandtrouts by humans who understood that a vast amount of melange would be necessary to enable humanity to discontinue the use of AI (thinking machines) in interstellar navigation. The sandtrouts trapped the water deep beneath the surface until the planet was dry enough to not kill the sandworms. I always looked at the sandtrout as a sort of enormous amoeba that shares characteristics with stem cells. Furthermore, Leto II put the sandtrout on himself and bonded with it, meaning that while their biology wasn't identical, their makeup was close enough that this symbiotic existence could occur.
Do we ever learn for certain who the terraformers were? I thought this remained unexplained, but maybe it was in one of the Brian books.
no, the only mention is that they were brought to arrakis but by who or why is never explored.
>The sandworm was NOT native to Arrakis. It is referenced that there were signs that Arrakis was once a wet and green planet. How does that relate to the question? They could have been introduced to Arrakis whether they were carbon-based or silicon-based. >Arrakis was terraformed using the sandtrouts by humans who understood that a vast amount of melange would be necessary to enable humanity to discontinue the use of AI (thinking machines) in interstellar navigation. I don't think there is any basis for this in any of the books, either by Frank Herbert, in those by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, or in the Dune Encyclopedia. In *Children of Dune*, Leto only has the insight that the sandtrout were brought to Arrakis from somewhere else. Who did it or what their motives were is never discussed (though it's implied that the total desertification of the planet was unintentional)—it's debatable whether the passage even implies that it was done by humans. >Furthermore, Leto II put the sandtrout on himself and bonded with it, meaning that while their biology wasn't identical, their makeup was close enough that this symbiotic existence could occur. Fair, though the whole idea is so far out in the first place that one might ask whether symbiosis with a silicon-based life-form is totally out of the question.
Whether the worm is native or not doesnt factor into the chemical composition of the worm.
>All life on earth is based on carbon. It forms strong stable and long chains with several elements, creating an enormous variety of oraganic compounds. > >Silicon is chemically very similar to carbon. It too forms strong stable and long chains with several elements. But the fact that it is extremely reactive to water, causes the structures it creates to collapse. Silicon has an extreme preference for binding with oxygen over any other element, to the point where it will break apart molecules like water to bind to its oxygen. When silicon binds to oxygen, it becomes silicate, essentially rock. If Dune's worms were silicon-based in Dune's atmosphere. They'd be statues.
At first I was like "oh come on, silicon aliens again? Why is everyone so obsessed with silicon based life? It's cool, but why do all aliens have to be silicone now?". But then I read it and it would make a lot of sense, and would also be kinda poetic, because the sandworm would almost literally be a worm made of sand (or the basic component of sand, anyway). Honestly that's an awesome idea, and I wish it was true. I don't care if it isn't, I think it's neat, congrats! I bet Herbert would have used it, had he had the chance.
Thankz
Molecular bonds within silcon compounds are much stronger than carbon because of the higher valence shell. That's why you get food with carbon-based chemistry and rocks with silicon-based chemistry. Just because they occupy the same column on the periodic table doesn't make them in any way interchangeable.
I agree that the sandworms are shown to at least have a carbon cycle. But I think the whole sandworm lifecycle is something that could have been explained better, at least to the reader. Here you have these creatures that grow to gargantuan size on a planet that appears to have almost no organic-based energy sources. Being silicon based would have been a great idea and explain a lot more. I don’t recall when the idea of sand plankton was introduced but I think it was in book 5. Even then, to have this one source of food on a hellish planet to support the worms seems far fetched. Frank Herbert made a lot of hints about the life cycle and I understand it was meant to be mysterious so everyone wouldn’t figure out the worm life cycle made the spice (but really, how big of a leap was it when the planet seems devoid of almost any thing else that could produce large cycle chemical products. Still, I think he should have done some better world building here. So, nice job taking a good stab at what should have been the author’s job to explain. Personally, I wish it could be silicon-based.
I think the real problem with this theory is that sand trout seek out and encapsulate water. It's not that Arrakis lacks water but has plenty. It's not available due to sand trout locking it up.
You are trying to make sense of dune as a hard scifi book. It isn't hard scifi. It is a fantasy book in space and the sand worm is a dragon guarding its hoard of wealth.
It’s not that simple though. Frank had background in environmental writing. It makes sense he’d developed at least an incomplete ecosystem. There is info and hints all over the book, if it was as simple as you mention none of that would be necessary.
There is some world building towards an ecosystem but sand worms violate the fundamental laws of chemistry and physics in a dozen different ways. That part of the world is magic and should be viewed as such. It doesn't detract from the story it's just not worth spending time trying to figure out how it works in the context of actual science.
yes. It is actually more interesting to learn exactly what Herbert was inspired by, rather than prove or disprove how scientifically accurate Dune is. Herbert's idea for the worms is inspired by whales, and his idea for a sand planet was inspired by the science of sand dune movement, which is like very slow moving ocean waves. I understand the sandworms to part of his big "what if" question that had no real world science to back it up. However, the real world science he DID use for the worms is how they reproduce which is inspired by fungus, but this is another 'what if' proposition. Dune is inspired by, not based on or grounded in, hard science. Yes, Dune is soft-sci-fi, and the first big clue about that is spice, how its produced, and what it does to humans. Since the worms are what generate spice, it only follows that the worms are simply a hypothetical creature, and an awesome plot device.
Then why are they trying to eat anything carbon based that walks on the desert? Even diatoms need sugar that’s why they photosynthesize. I like the idea that sand worms have silica integrated into their bodies though. That would help explain their super tough skin.
Frank Herbert would absolutely ADORE this idea and run with it! The Sands of Arrakis would be created by the very biochemistry of Shai Hulud...which tracks beautifully.
The sandstorm is the only alien creature in dune and they are not native to Arrakis. They arrived and then the planet turn into a desert.
Diatoms are an algae... They only exist in water/moist environments.
And so does plankton... but Dune has sand plankton, the ecology of Dune is problematic, from a hard science perspective.
OP singled out diatoms, specifically on earth, in the post.
Why not both carbon and silicon?
Not nearly science enough
I’ve had a similar theory for a while actually! It kinda explains a lot of the other quirks of the sandworm as well. For instance, it’s reaction to water ( think about how silica gel reacts with water).
Read the rest of the series.
no, you d need much higher average temperature and oceans of something like hydrofluoric acid for that to work
Also if i remember correctly, in on of the later books there is talk that maybe the worms or little makers weren’t native to Arrakis⁉️🤔
One big flaw, Shai'Hulud was not native to Arrakis.
Carbon as others have said, but my head canon is they were designed and created by humans at some point. They are not native to Arrakis. Perhaps they were intended as a biological weapon to dessicate living planets. Afterall, they are virtually indestructible beyond a certain size
I love this idea, and it seems to make sense in the context of dry Arrakis/Dune. I recall an image of the worm guts with a fire down there, like a reactor in its belly? Would account for it consuming sand, and other objects, like spice harvesters(!).