Chemistry of Spice Melange (from Dune) - Periodic Table of Videos
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- Опубликовано: 22 фев 2024
- We look at a published chemical structure for the mythical Spice Melange from the Dune science fiction series. More links and info in full description ↓↓↓
Featuring Jessie Groves (senior technician), Martyn Poliakoff and Robert Stockman.
Thanks also to Finlay Dowton, Konstantina Nikolaou, Albert Reynolds, and Zachary Douglas (who is a postgrad, not an undergrad!)
The structure was published in the Dune Encyclopedia - archive.org/details/dune-ency...
Dune books (Amazon affiliate link) - amzn.to/3uy43Mw
See The Prof discuss the chemistry of Breaking Bad:
• The Prof watches Break...
• The Acid Bathtub in Br...
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Next, NileRed is gonna synthesize this from old elastic bands, gelatin and food-grade copperstrychnine. And taste it of course.
at this point it wouldn't even be surprising
He gets a view and a thumbs up from me of course. I think I am already subbed.
😃
Will it turn his eyes blue, or just his tongue?
Chemiolis will do it before NileRed
NileRed turning out to be the Kwisatz Haderach would be pretty funny.
The professor might not like sci-fi because of all the mad scientists that look like him
They look like him and they keep getting the science wrong. That's just not allowed!
Yeah he looks like Thufir Hawat from the David Lynch version.
Hahaha!
Professor, that’s why it’s called Science FICTION.
@@nunyabitnezz2802 - Actually, no. Science fiction has nothing to do with the science being wrong (which was his complaint - although he made a couple of wrong assumptions, as others have pointed out).
Science fiction is simply fiction (i.e., a made-up story) that explores the consequences of scientific or technological progress. The science itself can (and ideally should) be 100% correct.
The Nilered version of this:
"So, I decided to synthesise Melange... and I'm now in Andromeda."
pretty much.... sad thing is, It wouldn't suprise me in the least with him
"Which I thought was pretty cool."
@@DahVoozel I’m not 100% certain but I believe that’s a styropyro quote
"Over the years I became very interested in spice. So in the end, I decided that the only way to really find out was to make some."
AppleTV+ and anime have copied such a premise.
first time hearing a “who knows what he was smoking” that was not hyperbole but just as incredibly damning
"as incredibly damning" as hyperbole?
As bad as something not to be taken literally?
"OMG it`s just as bad as something completely exaggerated"
Words, words are hard.
Lol
@@afrog2666 yeah not my best second half of a post
Volatilize
Didn’t know that was a word!
Maybe he was vaping?
I love that Prof was like, "this is totally fiction. Those worms are WAY too big."
I, like the Professor, no longer have any interests in Science Fiction while I used to Love it when I was younger. I CONGRATULATE the Professor for being a Humble True Professional.
As far as science fiction goes its not the craziest thing.
"Worm" has many definitions and I wouldn't be leaning on the invertebrate definition for this thing.
Worm used to be used much more broadly, certain kinds of sea serpents and dragons were described as worms.
Also since its another damn planet, applying our evolutionary divisions to it doesn't make any sense.
At least in the first movie the worms had a sort of exoskeleton at least. They opened a scale to open up an irritant to make it rotate and carry the rider to the top.
I've never watched the series, but I gather that the ice cliffs in Game of Thrones was also gravitationally inept, because it would have melted under its own weight.
The two coppers in the ring, that reminded the Professor of the oxygen carrier molecule in crabs called Hemocyanin, might be the clue. A worm with scales is more crablike and able to hold up under the weight of gravity at an immense size.
Hearing the professor say that a gallon of hydrogen fluoride would not be nearly enough to dissolve a tough gangster never gets old 😂😂
lol looks like it was used for marketing purposes to enroll students 🤣
He's expanding his demographic.
Our chemistry teacher always said that sulfuric acid would work better😂
If it was that easy to synthesize it, the people in the Dune universe wouldn't be killing each other on a desert planet over it, I suppose
Exactly
They eventually do use axolotl tanks to make it tho
@@CoperliteConsumer could be extinct or mutated by then
As far as I know, nothing in the original Dune books suggests that the sandworms of Arrakis are in any way related to the worms found on Earth, and so there's no particular reason to assume that they are necessarily invertebrates. (With that said, some of their other properties are rather implausible, albeit not as implausible as travel between star systems, or the Bene Gesserit superpowers.)
How are the armor plates that comprise sandworms not considered an exoskeleton?
@@capnzilog counter example is armadillo
If i recall right, not sure if this js from the original author books, his son's books or the encyclopedia, but they should be more akin either to plants or fungi in their infancy. I read only Dune and that was a while ago, maybe this was explained in the scene where the planetary ecologist dies in the first book.
@@nickfirst7249or a tortoise
@@FutureHH The first book gives only limited information about their life cycle (though I think it might reveal that the sandworms are where the spice comes from). However, the subsequent books (still within the series written by the original author) give more details. The juvenile form, called "sand trout", are far more numerous than the adults, produce the spice that the adults feed on, and are somehow involved collectively in isolating any environmental water, creating the desiccated environment that allows the adult form to flourish. The existence of distinct juvenile and adult forms with entirely different ecological roles is another clue that these aren't especially similar to earthworms. And if they were closely related to earth insects, then you'd expect the worm to be the juvenile form, rather than the adult.
The books are implausible in all kinds of ways. (Cartoons notwithstanding, deserts, especially very dry ones, are more rock than sand. Drugs definitely don't make people better at doing complicated math in their heads, and if a drug trip shows you the future, it's very unlikely to be accurate. Star systems are much too far apart for travel between them to be logistically feasible, at any level of technology. Sticking the juvenile forms of another organism onto your skin doesn't change your DNA, and if it did you'd die of cancer. Genetic memory? Get serious. The list goes on and on.) But criticizing it on the grounds that the sandworms aren't like earthworms is just silly. They're not *supposed* to be like earthworms.
Prof... "I'm not an organic chemist"...
Proceeds to give a very detailed organic chemistry description. I studied organic chemistry 4 years and he probably has more knowledge in a pinkie nail clipping than my entire brain capacity.
You, sir as well as all your colleagues, are true heroes of the internet! 😊
That's inorganic chemists for you. They always say they've forgotten basically everything they ever knew about ochem, but since many of them work with mixed organic-inorganic compounds, they often have rather extensive and exotic knowledge of certain aspects of organic chemistry.
@@hammerth1421-- True. Many compound, but NOT ALL, Compounds found in Organic Chemistry can be Very Complex. I, myself, felt more comfortable tackling Inorganic Chemistry versus Organic.
"I'm not an organic chemist" - says the chemist, made of organic molecules. Absolute liar, I tell you! Can't trust anything on the internet these days anymore...
What I love the most about chemistry as a discipline is that in the end, the deeper your understanding goes, the more widely applicable it is. The distinction between inorganic and organic chemistry is a useful one, but it is also a historic one. The understanding of chemical principles and laws extends to both areas. Many chemists working in one field will understand most of the other, or better put, are able to understand it, given enough context and information.
he is a sir actually
Im not a chemist by any means, but what the professor said about one of the coppers 'falling out' when interacting with water gave me a thought.
What if, because Dune is SO dry as a planet, the 2 copper atoms are able to make the deformed ring, and when Spice is consumed, the water in the body breaks one copper atom away (which might end up causing the eyes to turn blue) and the other copper atom stays and is metabolized.
I badly, badly want more discussion on this
And that is why water is toxic to the sandworms. It makes some sense!
you're so onto something
I was looking for this comment, this is the exact thought I had as well.
Amazing detail Sci Fi writers can produce. I love how this is 'close' to a possibility.
"I once this gets in contact with water, I'm sure the copper will drop out and be much happier."
Well, interesting that Arrakis has (basically) no water.
Heck, read some old AC Clark books. The guy basically invented the idea of GPS and space elevators.
Also, sandworms are depicted as very, very allergic to water. They die even with a little amount of it. And then they decompose and spill out a solution called the water of life, which is even more powerful and addictive than the spice itself.
So maybe those two coppers were not placed there randomly or as a cool feature. They could be meant to actually react in water, be for a worm poisoning or a human ingesting it.
Moreover, water is toxic to worms, and considering this structure it makes a lot of sense
And Stanislaw Lem invented generative AI, tablet computers and VR.
if accepted by editor.
Space elevators as currently envisaged were first proposed by Yuri N. Artsutanov in 1959, based on a rather different idea by none other than Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
If you know anything about the author of Dune, the 'Spice' of the story, was actually inspired by Psilocybin.
His original story of Dune involved underground fungus containing the spice.
Yes, Frank Herbert was a psychonaught.
@danhumphrey Not at all, actually. There are multiple interviews where he describes the spice was supposed to be an analogue of oil, and the political ramifications of such. The mind altering thing came later.
@laertesindeed it can be both. Obviously the resource war aspect of it can be seen as an analogue for oil, but the mind altering thing must have come from somewhere.
And cinnamon, which is explicitly stated in the books. Both the "silk road" where cinnamon was expensive. And many Arab coffee rituals still involve putting spice in the coffee. Dune is mostly what if cinnamon was oil. (And also psilocybin).
Bless the Professor and His chemicals.
Bless the teaching and learning of Him.
May His scepticism cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for His students.
Bi-lal kaifa.
I am so happy Professor Rob took that seriously he really enjoyed breaking that down
This was a good video thank you guys I can't wait for the next Dune movie
would've been really interesting if he sat down and had a go creating his own spice molecule! scifi franchises should really hire more scientists as consultants.
@@alveolate I'll take it and tell you if it works.
Rob transforming the spice = Kwizatz Haderach
Changing the poison is something every Reverand Mother should be able to do.
He has altered the spice, pray he does not alter it any further.
@@therealquadeHe has already altered the Universe's fate.
@@Skaldewolf males are not reverend mothers
Next, head over to the Nottingham Physics Dept and ask if they want to do a video on Dune's Holtzman effect.
Better not have any projectile weapons up there!
@@ayem4425And make damn sure you don't turn on a laser!
Such an engine uses neutrinos proven to be tachyonic of a Feynman diagram.
Its amazing to see this channel is still going strong, I found it in collegfe back in 2016 and so happy to see Dr. Poliakoff is still happy and healthy
The videos must flow
"Who knows what this would do in water..."
funny thing about Arrakis...
brady hopping on the Dune trend to promote chemistry, what an absolute hero!
I was hoping that from Breaking Bad... but it just got the "my chemistry teacher is bad!" whine some credibility...
"when there is a flunking grade... you think I'm the one who failed?... no, I am the one who fails"
Let’s synthesize spice!
It took the Tleilaxu thousands of years to synthesize even a rudimentary knockoff.
@@paulwalsh2344 this is the one part of dune that could actually prove to be realistic... altho who knows, maybe AI will shorten that to a couple decades xD
@@alveolate That is, unless we outlaw thinking machines before that.
@@alveolate Blasphemy! Heresy! hou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind, So commands the orange catholic bible!
Or just have Arab coffee with cinnamon. It's wonderful and gets you 90% of the way there.
Hemocyanin is popular amongst invertebrates:
Hemocyanin was first discovered in Octopus vulgaris by Leon Fredericq in 1878. The presence of copper in molluscs was detected even earlier by Bartolomeo Bizio in 1833. Hemocyanins are found in the Mollusca and Arthropoda including cephalopods and crustaceans and utilized by some land arthropods such as the tarantula Eurypelma californicum, the emperor scorpion, and the centipede Scutigera coleoptrata. Also, larval storage proteins in many insects appear to be derived from hemocyanins.
Just to nitpick, sandworms of Dune are not like earthworms, they have exoskeleton. In the book Fremen ride them by lifting up a part of carapace. After that the worm will instinctively orient itself to keep the exposed part as far away from the sand as possible.
This is also in the first movie. I haven't seen the more recent one, and I don't remember about the SciFy version.
It's the same in the syfy version too.
Also the Shai-Hulud uses silicon in its body chemistry, so it should be able to produce some strong structural material.
Sandworms are living maglev monorail locomotive bullet trains able to biomineralize magnetite loadstone on underside larvae and vomit victims for rail transit tracks not to mention Freudian themes much like portables Brennan, Schiel., Lartigue, Siemens, Decauville, etc.
@@guidokorber2866 That could explain why water is so toxic to them, as silicon has a habit of dissolving in it.
great to see you again professor.
I would love to see a video with all the professors that participated in the Periodic Videos just to see how they are doing now and what they are working on nowadays.
I would love if Neil gets persuaded to do this haha
"i don't really like sci-fi" says the man who looks like a real-life Doc Brown
Yup. Bit of a blowhard in this one.
I haven't watched Periodic videos for years. I'm happy to see porf. Poliakoff is still there and rocking that hairdo. As always great content. I must stop more often by.
You must.
I once had three handfuls of the stuff. It was a mélange à trois!
Be careful not to loose a finger in the reaction! 😂
*groan* 😂😂😂
I've missed this frizzy haired legend.
He's been doing chemistry videos since I was in secondary school learning it, now I've been graduated with my biochemistry degree for a few years, so glad he's still going strong and can still share with your younger generations
Can I just say that I loved to see Prof Rob Stockman back! Please can you do more videos with him?
Bless the maker and his content
Bless the uploading and the captioning of them
Spice vapors are cannonically orange so I don't think the Baron was smoking spice. Another common drug that pops up during this era in the series, Ellaca/Semuta, is used in conjunction with atonal music. I'd guess it was opium as the Baron's degenerative condition is extremely painful.
Well if it’s too heavy to smoke it wouldn’t be releasing vapor, or have a characteristic odor like cinnamon.
i love how much weird sense fictional chemistry can be. you get something from a worm that is similar to haemocyanin, transfers energies to you, and it's even blue (though not cyan)
The spice itself is not blue, rather, when ingested it sometimes gave humans blue in their eyes (which had something to do with the effect it had on your blood and the thin capillaries in the eye)
@@laertesindeed oh right, it was red. But like, the red of copper, to go with the blue of oxidized copper? it kinda works.
@@KairuHakubi Technically Frank Herbert described it as brownish red... more like cinnamon; and even with the smell of cinnamon.
@@laertesindeed huh fascinating.. scifi is full of so many funderful descriptions.
As a botanist from america it would be a dream to study at nottingham for even a day.
Link to the School of Chemistry in the description and here - bit.ly/NottChem
@@periodicvideos thank you! I'm looking at the website right now.
@@prestonheck Cant wait for You to be featured in @periodicvideos
the forest is long gone
I have a feeling Professor Poliakoff doesn't believe in magic either.
It's been a long time since we've seen Rob Stockman, his older videos were excellent and I'd love to see more.
Hey that is cool! Professors recreating that space LSD from Dune!
That first film is so trippy! A very interesting example of David Lynch's work. I'll have to get on reading the first book at least and seeing the newer films
Oh definitely read the book. And the films are all great.. I love each one for different reasons.
I really love how seriously the professors took it. Commenting on the bonds, properties, colours. Really cool
Great to see that you are alive and well. I’ve watched your channel since I was a very young child and your content impacted me more than any other. I’m now 17 years old and I am a junior at UC Berkeley. Just felt like saying thanks, for getting me through some hard times and pushing my life in a positive direction.
Only chemical description of spice by Frank Herbert is its association with aldehydes and ketons. It's probably supposed to be heavily oxidised mixture of compound with these functional groups. Remeber. Water is extremely scarce on Arrakis because the oxygen from water molecule simply became part of the "spice compound" thus leading to massive elemental disbalance which destroyed the original ecosystem.
The Prof and this channel is absolutely stellar. Nice take on Dune!
Haven't seen your videos for a while but I'm so glad you're still kicking and imparting your knowledge Dr.Poliakoff
This was such a neat episode. Thanks yall!
About the blue crab blood, I heard that the spice was originally coloured blue in the novels and not orange like im the 84 and 2021 film. Which ties back nicely with the double copper bond and the blue eyes.
I love the little detail about spice making the eyes blue.
Also, the plastic / petroleum derivative portion of the molecule... Spice production in the books involves the entire life cycle of the worms. They travel at vast speeds under the sand - the heat and pressures must be immense. That's at least as viable as a Heisenberg Compensator for fiction, right?
It could as well be a pro-drug where it gets metabolised into the active compound. It would have been interesting to discuss how heat treatment would have changed the structure
I love Rob, His area is one in which I will never have a solid grasp yet he makes it sound like I should be able to. I wish he did more vids.
Really cool having all the different input collaborating
Very interesting and I love seeing people get motivated to do cool things like this by their interests!
Actually such a well thought through compound!
This is beautiful. Great choice for a topic and so well put together and interesting.
Good to see you professor and crew
After seeing the peptide in the molecule, A talk about enzymes and the complexities of designing them by nucleotides would be great.
What a fun episode! Would love to see more projects from students in the future
The Fremen Bread recipe in the "Dune Encyclopedia" is really good.
Having been a “Mad Grad” student, I truly appreciate a “Mad Scientist” professor.
I am always glad to see Martyn and these videos.
Thanks professor and crew
I find nearly unbelievable that a guy that looks like that say he doesn't like sci-fi or fiction. Also, the molecule is just crazy, Villeneuve or even Frank Herbert didn't even look at that thing. This is just to coast on the Dune hype of course.
I’m ecstatic that y’all actually decided to do this after all! Hi, Magpie!
Excellent Content 👍
Grew up watching this professor. I’m 24 now, glad to see you here Sir 🤠
Nice work, fascinating about the copper and crabs!
Great topic for a video. Very interesting.
Glad to hear from Prof. Stockman again.
One thing I really love about the old Dune movie is that Patrick Stewart didn't age a day for about 30 years.
I was yearning for a new video..periodic video😁
Great video thanks for sharing
“heaven knows what he was smoking” yup just needed to hear it from him for once
Look. We're all going to watch Dune Part 2. Denis Villeneuve is a star in my eyes and I love his work even if it's not as popular as it deserves to be.
But Spice is a chemical that allows precognition to prevent faster-than-light ships from being destroyed during interstellar voyages, I'm not sure there's going to be a real-world analog.
folding space has nothing to do with the speed of light
Villeneuve is aesthetically very competent, but I never find his films very satisfying from a structural point of view. And Dune specifically has some very questionable casting choices (ex., Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho).
Mutated Y chromosomes?
Thanks for the video.
And thus occurs the dawn of interstellar travel...
I think we should meet for a spice Melange to discuss how to breed some Sandworms here on earth
@@EarnestBunbury I hear they're very good for aerating the soil.
You could tell that organic chemist was trying to work out how to make that bit with the copper lol
@@zyeborm but we require a planetologist to set the right conditions for our spice fabric. I’m not sure, wether earth’s conditions are sufficient enough. Maybe we should give climate change more time
@@zyeborm I can't remember, wether copper ever gets associated to spice in Dune. Maybe its in there, to give it the color of cinnamon
Now please try Asimov's thiotimoline.
I will, in a couple of months ago.
Finally a once in a life time chance to add knowledge to something professor Poliakoff said:
Indeed many decapod crustaceans (crabs and lobster) have a major hemocyanin component. But importantly, so do Horseshoe Crabs (not crustaceans), which blue blood clots when in contact with bacterial toxins. This is extremely important because we extract their blood to detect bacterial contamination (called Limulus amebocyte lysate).
Conservation note: more than 700 thousand horseshoe crabs were harvested for their blood in 2021 alone, there are now ongoing efforts to protect these species.
Can't wait to see the video where you synthesize it...
This is awesome! I like Jesse already!
Excellent example of how to use haed science to engage a broader audience. Very well done.
This is so exciting
Thanks
That is so cool!
love the ref to oil they put into the molecule
I do find the breakdown of the molecule to be incredibly fascinating as a Dune fan. I don't think the Barons spice smoking is necessarily the pure molecule, so him vaporizing some solution made with the substance isn't too far off. I liked how the people who made it did seem to have something of an idea of what the individual pieces they were putting together did, like it's solubility in water, and since the Sandworm is somewhat related to fish having a piece similar to blue blood from crabs is really cool. also the guild navigators are in liquid tanks, almost a thin melange syrup.
I want to see someone actually make this compound in the lab
Now we just need a computer simulation of this to see what happens when ingested.
8:34 Mistake in both the new drawing and the 3d ball model: 3 bonds on the sulfur would make it a positively charged sulfonium ion! In the old drawing it says S1OCH3, so its a one, not another methyl group. S1OCH3 is very odd to me, so I think the original drawing tries to say thats a sulfoxide there, with double bond O to S and another methyl group. Also note that sulfoxides are chiral, so you would have to pick one enantiomer when building the ball model and drawing it. Nice video though :)
Very interesting!
I was hoping they were actually going to synthesize the compound fr
Doesn't matter if it's accurate. What matters is that it flows.
The spice must flow.
Very happy to see you still teaching Professor. Love your videos. Just a random question Sir? Did you ever meet or know Julius Somner Miller? Both of you are in my top 10 men of science I’d love to meet. I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Nye.
You can not travel space without spice. Spice is found only on Arrakis. How did they get to Arrakis before spice was discovered?
Guild Heighliners use a Holtzman drive to travel faster than light. The navigator has enough prescience to plot a course that avoids anything in their path that'd destroy the ship. Before the Butlerian Jihad humanity used prescient computers to calculate the route, but thinking machines were banned and an alternative had to be found. Space flight without a navigator is not impossible, but very, very dangerous. To understand how important the navigators and the Guild are in the Dune universe, the year is not 10,191 AD, it's AG or "After Guild".
They used the aftershaves, deodorants, shampoos, body washes, shaving cream and soaps "Old Spice".
The piece which looks like polystyrene is actually an interesting touch, because styrene is surprisingly close to the compound responsible for the smell of cinnamon. According to the fictional lore, Melange was supposed to smell like cinnamon. NileRed made a great video about this, where he transforms polystyrene into cinamon-flavoured sweets.
the three-coordinate sulfur hanging pendant to the porphyrin bothers me almost as much as the two coppers. I'm a fan of copper acetate, so Cu-Cu interactions are quite interesting, especially magnetically.
If you look at the original picture there is only a little stroke under the bond between sulfur and oxygen. I would't see this as a methyl group which is attached to the sulfur atom, this has to be attached directly to the letter "S". So I think it's just the figur "1".
I think the team or whoever draw an own structural formular from the "original" picture made a misinterpretation there.
I think the developer of the original structure just didn't like the empty space between the two CH2 groups and the OCH3 at the end, so he inserted a "1", even is this wasn't necessesary and didn't make any sense.
Perhaps whatever keeps the part with the two copper atoms flat as opposed to the bowl shape of this model is whatever allows folding space.
would it survive outside a cleanroom?
when Professor said he didnt like sci-fi or fiction, I felt that
The Sandworm collapsing under its own gravity for being so large is understandable misinterpretation of what it actually it. The worm itself is actually a colony of smaller animals, about the size of a large halibut, called a maker. They make up the individual scales of the worm and essentially combine, lose their brain function and slave their body to the central nervous system of the worm proper which is made from the initial maker worms who grow to about school bus size before growing bigger by having immature makers join up with it. This transformation makes them hydrophobic and totally new animal. Frank based this on the eel, other fish, crustaceans and insect lifecycles.
Interesting video.
As much as it is sci fi the structure does add up with the story. I mean it’s only similar structure is hemocyanin which is found in crabs and is blue just like concentrated spice. Its di copper on the middle is jeopardised by water which is barely on Arrakis and is toxic to sand worms. Spice is then made by sand trout who actively bury that water. And the whole idea of the structure having some effects on the body’s electrical functions, and causing the creation of more cells in the Köhliker-Kramptz center which is known for its effects on perception. then supposed to have a similar structure to that of chlorophyll and blood but having a copper unit instead of iron or magnesium. For something completely fiction it does have some questionable characteristics rooted in hard science. I just want someone to have ago at making it and just seeing how it looks .
Would you be able to do a video on Boron Triflouride.
4:53 the way he delivers "perhaps that is why he is bad" was so funny to me.
Because breaking the properties of chemistry and smoking a non vaporizing compounds makes you a bad guy. Which honestly it kinda does.
Good to see Nottingham students involved in Perodic videos.
BTW, if Spice turns usuers' eyes blue, what would it do to their blood?
Hearing the way a scientist who is a non sci-fi fan pull apart a sci-fi concept that is the key to a really great story makes me confident that the best sci-fi is not the most science and fact ridden, but the most grand and inventive.