Sandworms: Monsters That Break the Mold

Crawly.

August 1965 | The sandworms of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune are legends of the sci-fi kingdom, but I want to use these creatures of the sandy deep to launch a bigger question… one that may uproot our very understandings of alien life.

What if, unlike all biology on earth, these particular life-forms aren’t made up of carbon at all, but actually an entirely different elemental structure? After all, they’re swimming in a sea of it. Let’s consider silicon.

It’s a legit question guys.

Now this is an interesting leap to make, so let’s take it slowly.

The sandworms that live beneath the deserts of Arrakis have — luckily for geeks like me — been speculated on by scientist fanatics for decades. Dozens of key insights into their anatomy and behavior have been explored in amazing detail, including their life-cycles, mating behaviors, and body segmentation. Fun facts according to the Dune Encyclopedia: sandworms live well-over 1000 years and can grow up to 1000 meters in length. For reference, this absolutely dwarfs my “all-time great” Sando Sea Monster.

With all these answers already in place, my curiosity shifts more towards the desert ecosystem of Arrakis. First and foremost it’s worth noting that the deepest desert sand on Earth is only 40-or-so meters deep — this doesn’t undermine the fictional environments of Dune, but we need to realize that the desert ergs (as they’re formally called) on Arrakis are magnitudes deeper than anything we’ve observed or studied on Earth. In fact, these ecosystems are much more like oceans than deserts — the worms are able to burrow deep and freely, and only breach for air or sunlight when necessary. An entire system of life could exist underneath the surface, hidden from view.

#itsallconnected

But there’s a big difference between desert seas and the ocean deep, and that’s the ability for the ecosystem to sink carbon. Alongside biodiversity hotspots like rainforests, ocean ecosystems are some of the largest sinks of carbon on earth — meaning that through either dissolved carbon dioxide or photosynthesis by plankton, there’s a lot of organic matter that kickstarts an ocean food chain. For an objectively amazing source on this topic, see The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten. I learned more from this half-hour episode than four years of undergrad lectures.

Let’s cut swiftly to the core of this lesson: every bit of life on earth draws its physical matter from carbon being captured by autotrophs, like trees or grass or algae. The bigger the organisms you see in an ecosystem, the more carbon necessary to fuel that growth. It all starts somewhere.

And so here’s the puzzle about Arrakis and sandworms. These creatures are enormous, even considering their slow lifecycles. The raw matter for them to grow so much must come from somewhere — and yet the whole point of a desert ecosystem is that plant matter is typically low. Very low.

So where are the building blocks coming from that allow these sandworms to grow so big? One answer could be a hidden carbon sink deep underneath the desert surface, but that’s less fun. Let’s think more outside the box.

For quite some time, scientists have wondered whether life could exist with different fundamental elements leading the way. Silicon is the top contender — largely because the element (which behaves similarly to carbon in many cases) can form long-enough molecules to store information similar to DNA. Over the decades the speculation has grown amongst scientists and authors alike.

And on a planet like Arrakis, this speculation isn’t unfounded. Just like we humans swim in a gaseous ocean of carbon dioxide all around us, these giant worms spend their entire lives immersed in a sea of sand, itself a silicon compound. Impossible? Definitely not the biggest leap we’ll take on this blog.

However I do want to conclude with a clarification: I’m in no way implying that this is a hidden truth to the Dune lore or the sandworm biology. It’s not a hidden easter egg and it’s not even (to me at least) a credible theory based on the original text. Just… food for thought, I suppose. I’m not claiming the worms are secretly chock-full of silicon, but if we were ever to someday discover a life-form so drastically different from our own, we might see some similarities.

To end this post, I’ll leave with an excerpt from the Dune Encyclopedia I mentioned above:

METABOLISM OF THE ADULT WORM The adult G. arraknis was a true autotroph, producing all of its nutritional needs from inorganic compounds on the planet surface. The energy to drive the synthetic reactions was obtained by the travel of the worm through the sand which caused an electrostatic charge differential. The resulting electrons passed to an electron acceptor believed to be a cupri-cyanide compound, the reduced form of which accumulated in the worm body.

Either way you spin it this biology is pretty freaky-deaky, and as far as I’m concerned, it leaves a lot up to the imagination.