In the Dune books, spice smells like cinnamon, whereas tholin on Titan “probably smells like bitter almonds…and death,” Malaska said.Īrrakis isn’t the only name from the Dune novels that adorns Titan’s geological features. Malaska likes to imagine that Titan’s hydrocarbon sand, which is actually referred to as tholin, or complex organic gunk, could double as the infamous spice at the center of Dune’s expansive narrative arc. Titan’s sand is made of large organic molecules, which would make it softer and stickier, said Mike Malaska, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.Īll of the features on Titan (here photographed in ultraviolet and infrared by the Cassini orbiter) are named after places in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. Arrakis is a vast, undifferentiated plain of sand, but not sand as we know it. If you haven’t already guessed, this Arrakis-officially called Arrakis Planitia-belongs to the second-largest moon in our solar system, Titan. We’ve even landed a spacecraft near there. This Arrakis is only about 1 billion kilometers from Earth, on a world orbiting Saturn. No, this Arrakis is closer to our own world. You know that several hundred kilometers away is a vast network of canyons that from above, look like they could have been carved by massive worms.īefore you get too excited, it’s important to know that this isn’t the notorious desert planet featured in the Dune novels. Sand for miles, as far as the eye can see. The air is unbreathable, the sky hazy, the landscape mysterious. Imagine standing on Arrakis, surrounded by an ocean of sand.
Betrayal, chaos, and political infighting ensue. Frank Herbert’s Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a son of a noble family sent to the hostile desert planet Arrakis to oversee the trade of a mysterious drug called melange (nicknamed “spice”), which gives its consumers supernatural abilities and longevity.
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