The God Emperor and the Sandworms Cycle


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Lisan Al-Gaib
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Post by Lisan Al-Gaib »

A Thing of Eternity wrote:I'm fine with the idea of there being sandtrout within the sandworm somewhere, ready to release upon death, but the idea that sandworms are made out of sandtrout, or pick them up as parasites doesn't work for me.
If I wasnt understood, I believe the sandtrout that goes to the "hibernation state" develop itself like a baby inside the uterine: Multiplying itself like a cell, growing the organs, nervy system, tooths, scale,....And the "flesh" of a sandworm are all composed by sandtrout acting like cells, and when in contact with water or dying, they "wake up" and return to the sands.

For me its the best explanation, because Kynes said in Dune that the segments of a sandworm had their own life.
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Post by SandChigger »

Freakzilla wrote:Technically, the sandtrout aren't native to Arrakis. Leto II doesn't say someone brought sandworms to Arrakis, he says someone brought sandtrout.
Yeah. I seem to remember you have a pet sandtrout/sandworm symbiosis theory floating about, right? ;)

I just don't see them being separate life forms, originally or later.

An analogy that occurred to me yesterday is Niven's Pak. You're all familiar with these, right? Humans are basically Pak young (Children & Breeders). If exposed during later maturity to Tree-of-Life, a Breeder will transform into a super strong, super intelligent Protector; otherwise the Breeder just breeds, producing more Children, and eventually becomes decrepit and dies.

The sandtrout are like the Breeders; they propagate and/or produce the sand plankton (the Children) that eventually grow into sandtrout. The spice-blow is the Tree-of-Life; if a sandtrout survives the experience (humans exposed to ToL too late also did not survive), it enters the cyst stage and metamorphoses into a sandworm.

The analogy isn't perfect, of course. The Pak Breeders don't create the environment for the emergence of the Protectors like the sandtrout do for the worms. Nor do the Protectors feed on the Children, as the sandworms do on the sand plankton. And the Protectors don't dissolve into Breeders when old. But the basic idea of an organism with a given life cycle (sand plankton -> sandtrout -> sand plankton) that can be bumped onto another life cycle (sandtrout -> sandworm -> sandtrout) under the proper environmental conditions is right, I think.

It's hard to imagine how such an organism could evolve on a normal water planet. (What possible selectional pressures could have resulted in it? OMG...proof for ID in a fictional world?! :shock: )

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Lisan Al-Gaib
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Post by Lisan Al-Gaib »

I dont think the sand plankton is the sandtrout child. Frank dont say anything about that.

And we have to realize that the sandworm cycle cant be close. The sandworm have to get energy from somewhere (in the case: eating sand planktons and creating heat from the movement).
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Post by Crysknife »

Isn't all life on earth just evolved forms of the same thing? We all share a common ancestor, we all eat each other, without plants we don't breath, without insects we don't eat, etc, etc.

Granted, I don't mate with a tree and have giant sandworms pop out. It is rather hard to see how the cycle could evolve. It would have to be after a natural disaster that killed everything else on the native planet off. I would think the sandtrout would then just diversify and prey on each subspecies thereafter, rather than start a whole new stage or stages for the same organism. But then again, I don't see why butterflies would ever need to evolve either.

I'm just not sure about one organism surviving on a planet-wide scale without evolving many offshoot organisms.


Hmmm
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Crysknife wrote:Isn't all life on earth just evolved forms of the same thing? We all share a common ancestor, we all eat each other, without plants we don't breath, without insects we don't eat, etc, etc.

Granted, I don't mate with a tree and have giant sandworms pop out. It is rather hard to see how the cycle could evolve. It would have to be after a natural disaster that killed everything else on the native planet off. I would think the sandtrout would then just diversify and prey on each subspecies thereafter, rather than start a whole new stage or stages for the same organism. But then again, I don't see why butterflies would ever need to evolve either.

I'm just not sure about one organism surviving on a planet-wide scale without evolving many offshoot organisms.


Hmmm
Photosynthesis solves that. No photosynthesis from sandplankton to trout to worm that I am aware of, there would have to be some outside energy coming in somewhere. Can't live off eating your children forever.

Lisan: I think it says in the back of dune that the plankto do become sandtrout. Sorry, i don't have quoting material handy.
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Post by Crysknife »

The sandtrout are described as half plant half animal, and the sandworms give off massive amounts of oxygen. Something was happening, be it with photosynthesis or the sand itself.
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Post by SandChigger »

Here's the passage; it was posted on an earlier page in the thread as well:
Now they had the circular relationship: little maker to pre-spice mass; little maker to shai-hulud; shai-hulud to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures called sand plankton; the sand plankton, food for shai-hulud, growing, burrowing, becoming little makers.
"The sand plankton...growing, burrowing, becoming little makers [=sandtrout]." FH doesn't say specifically where the sand plankton come from. He doesn't tell us much more about them at all, in fact. (Four occurrences only in all six books.) The above passage tells us that they eat the spice (when it is not harvested by humans, of course), and that they themselves are eaten by the adult worms. And that they "grow, burrow, and become" sandtrout. If they are not larval/immature sandtrout, then what are they?

Other than a passage in Messiah about the worms needing a "bit of Arrakis—sand plankton, Little Makers and all" to be successfully transplanted elsewhere, the only other mention of the little critters is in Dune, also in the "Ecology Appendix":
At the desert edge of the plantings, the sand plankton is being poisoned through interaction with the new forms of life. The reason: protein incompatibility. Poisonous water was forming there which the Arrakis life would not touch. A barren zone surrounded the plantings and even shai-hulud would not invade it.
(Note that the bit about "poisonous water" is odd. Wouldn't that imply that there might be planets where transplanting the sandtrout wouldn't work, where the water wouldn't agree with them?!)

But Lisan is right about there needing to be an ultimate energy source for the system. On Earth it's mostly the Sun, either directly (for plants through photosynthesis) or indirectly (for herbivores through eating plants, for carnivores through eating herbivores, or for omnivores...through eating everybody else).

But there are also those deep sea thermal vents with the tube worms and albino lobsters (as featured in DaPinchy Cold?) that have nothing to do with the Sun or photosynthetic plants. (And which inspired Hechtel to propose her version of sulfur-vent-sucking sandtrout.)

Maybe, as immature sandtrout, the sand plankton absorb light or heat from the Arrakeen Sun? We know they eat spice, which is naturally going to be on the surface. Hard to say. Frank didn't, probably because he hadn't worked anything out for it. After all, this is all backdrop, not the main focus of the story.

Anyway, I think of the Arrakeen sandworms—as a super organism encompassing the sand plankton, sandtrout, and adult worms—as "biosphere killers". As soon as they get a foothold on a planet, every other form of life is basically dust. Their evolution presents as a chicken-egg paradox: you can't have sandworms without sandtrout; but why would sandtrout work to encapsulate water and dessicate the environment without the potential of the worms? Or did the worms evolve later, in a variation of Crysknife's suggestion. (The sandtrout kill off the biosphere...leaving only sandtrout...which then somehow evolve to create the worms. Again, the real-world problem is why would they take that particular form? What would pressure them to because enormous worm-like organisms? Where is the survival advantage?)

:?: :?: :?: :wink:
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Post by Lisan Al-Gaib »

SandChigger wrote:Here's the passage; it was posted on an earlier page in the thread as well:
Now they had the circular relationship: little maker to pre-spice mass; little maker to shai-hulud; shai-hulud to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures called sand plankton; the sand plankton, food for shai-hulud, growing, burrowing, becoming little makers.
Yep, you are right. I had forgotten this passage. Im sorry.

So, the unique way to explain from where the energy come to this cycle is the solar energy(sandplankton and sandtrout) and the heat throught the movement (Sandworm).

But for me this cycle seem to not be fully right, what came first to Arrakis? Tha sandplankton or the sandtrout? They have to feed themself with a food outside the cycle.
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Lisan Al-Gaib wrote:
SandChigger wrote:Here's the passage; it was posted on an earlier page in the thread as well:
Now they had the circular relationship: little maker to pre-spice mass; little maker to shai-hulud; shai-hulud to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures called sand plankton; the sand plankton, food for shai-hulud, growing, burrowing, becoming little makers.
Yep, you are right. I had forgotten this passage. Im sorry.

So, the unique way to explain from where the energy come to this cycle is the solar energy(sandplankton and sandtrout) and the heat throught the movement (Sandworm).

But for me this cycle seem to not be fully right, what came first to Arrakis? Tha sandplankton or the sandtrout? They have to feed themself with a food outside the cycle.
Agreed, and honestly, the heat thing doesn't make much sense. It reaks of "perpetual motion" style physics which just don't work. Whatever energy would be gained from the heat would only be a tiny percentage of the energy it took to make that heat.

However, if as Chig says, the sandplankton are getting energy from the sun then they would work as a source of energy for the sandtrout and worms. If they're silicon based like the worms then I guess there plenty of that lying around to be used as building material...
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Post by Worm »

I've read a paper about how cellulose is instrumental in making silica hybrids.
Bacterial cellulose (BC) hydrated membranes present nanometric reticulated structure that can be used as a template in the preparation of new organic–inorganic hybrids. BC–silica hybrids were prepared from BC membranes and tetraethoxysilane, (TEOS) at neutral pH conditions at room temperature. Macroscopically homogeneous membranes were obtained containing up to 66 wt.% of silica spheres, 20–30 nm diameter. Scanning electron micrographs clearly show the silica spheres attached to cellulose microfibrils. By removing the cellulose, the silica spheres can be easily recovered. The new hybrids are stable up to 300 °C and display a broad emission band under UV excitation assigned to oxygen-related defects at the silica particles surface. Emission color can be tuned by changing the excitation wavelength.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/e5647512u32rpq77/

Basically I take this as proof that a half-plant (alot of plants contain cellulose), half-animal sandtrout could indeed be instrumental in forming a worm's silicon armor by bonding to silica spheres in the sand, protecting the worm to temperatures of 300 °C. Plus the silica spheres can be recovered easily, probably quickly by contact with water, and more slowly after the worm dies naturally. So the idea of sandtrout making up a worm's body has merit.

I don't think FH spent alot of time trying to explain the whole worm cycle in detail. i think he was trying to focus more on the human element of the story. Conjecture is fun and thought provoking, but there isn't anyway we can be sure what the real answer is.
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Post by SandChigger »

The one thing we can be damned certain of, though, is this:

WORMS DON'T PRODUCE SPICE. :twisted:


Before or after hybridization with Leto. So up yours, KJA.
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