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Even when spice no longer flows, I'll still be able to fold my pizza. That's timeless wisdom.

My father was a navigator on a spice freighter. (At least, that's what my uncle says.)

My mental concept of how it works in Villeneuve 's Dune is that the ship does jump from location A to location B, but while the engine is online the ship technically occupies 2 separate points in space time. Since it is hollow, this allows it to act as a wormhole or gate, and let ships pass through. That said, once the engine disengages, the ship only exists at one of those two points.

Unlike a lot of his contemporaries Frank used science as a general tool to advance the plot. Highliners fold space and are guided by prescient navigators. Enough said. Battlestar Galactica visualizes this best. The ship is in one spot one moment and somewhere else the next. The navigator makes sure it doesn't end up in a star, planet, or other inconvenient place.

In many ways, prescience takes the place of computing or AI -- something banned in the Dune universe. The navigator performs the same purpose for interstellar travel as the Mentat serves for calculating and business projections.

This form of faster than light travel has always been my favorite among the various types imagined for other stories. I think you helped define it for me when toward the end of your video you mentioned the human aspect in the form of Guild Navigators.

I'm glad to see this covered so well and concisely, hope it clears up misunderstandings about the role of spice/navigators. For those questioning the logic of using Alcubierre/warp drives in Dune, here's a lengthy explanation of why (at least to me) it makes sense. Other tech could derail the entire premise of spice control, as possibly with the portal/wormhole ships shown in Dune1. Dune's technology used for personal shields, lasguns and space travel all derive from the Holtzman effect, which is basically control over classical/subatomic/quantum 'separating forces', or in other words a unifying theory including the expansionary force of dark matter. The depiction of the Heighliners in the first part of Dune shows them as a hollow construct, that has a very clear stable interstellar 'tunnel' that a ship can travel through at relatively low speeds. This very much brings to mind an Einstein-Rosen bridge, chosen I'm sure because they're commonly known as space-time "wormholes". The issue is that a wormhole creates 2 opposing openings at 2 distinct space-time locations that are linked independent of the relative state of the universe. There is no interstellar traversal if this is the case, but instead the ships facilitate travel by calculating both ends of the bridge as static locations relative to their destination systems, then traversing within the bridge while it remains stable. On the other hand, if interstellar travel is done by using a warp (Alcubierre) drive, which essentially contracts space-time in front and expands it behind the vessel to achieve FTL, as would make sense with Holtzman's effect, then you would actually need to travel through the space between systems. This would take significantly more time, time which is described as weeks worth of travel in the books, as opposed to a very short, consistent, and obstacle-free traversal time of the end-points within the wormhole. The paper folding analogy often used in popular media is really a demonstration of the speed at which one can traverse from any two distinct points in space using a wormhole, not that the effect actually folds space/time. One can calculate where systems are or will be relative to each other and the universe by observing light without the need of prescience. Once the relative distance as affected by gravitational wells and the constant expansion of space is established, you can have a predetermined wormhole paths between systems of any distance. This doesn't make sense with the Dune specified limitations of humanity as traveling within interstellar terraformed colonies of very close proximity. Wormholes create their own truncated internal space, as opposed to space that is occupied with matter that is potentially deadly to the vessel traversing in warp. Matter which could alter the time spent in warp by interaction with the warp bubble/Heighliner shield, thereby throwing off the space-time arrival of the vessel. Thereby vessels becoming 'lost', as described in the book. It would be a space-time paradox, and to navigate it successfully you would need to be able to predict the future as you go through while isolated from it. Much harder for navigators than calculating end points of a wormhole before travel. So with a warp drive you need more than genius math savants, you need them as prescient navigators, and with wormholes less so. If you don't absolutely need navigators, you don't need spice for travel. If you don't need spice, then the guild has no reason to defer to the authority of the fremen on satellite surveillance over Arrakis. If surveillance can be used, it can be bought, and therefore Harkonnen could find and destroy fremen. If the fremen are weakened, there's no Jihad. There's no Jihad, there's no golden path. There's no golden path, there's no failure of Muadib. There's no failure, there's no moral. There's no moral, there's no book. Dune has warp drives, not worm-holes. Otherwise, it'd be a massive plot-hole.

To make it in current laymans terms, The guild navigators are like Dr Strange in Endgame, they see all the possible futures, and the one that gets them to their location, thats the one they choose, activating the holtzman engines to the desired effect. So no, they dont directly foldspace, they just enable it.

The Spacing Guild has always been a mystery through out the saga. Frank Herbert left so much open for interpretation. I like how you present the various options. I'm still partial to the David Lynch Guild Navigators. As they're so Lovecraftian in their appearance.

Incredible presentation as usual! My appreciation of Dune grows from these well produced videos every view!

Your Dune videos are always fascinating Elaine. Keep up the great work!

Right, but it’s literally described as “traveling without moving.” So I think of the depictions so far, villleneuve’s is the closest to canon, since the heighliners would simply be in two places at once (at least it would appear that way to a human observer.)

I confess, space folding makes me think of origami .. like the navigators spend their downtime making elephants, giraffes and other animals.

the navigators are basically the same as star wars' or BSG's hyperdrive navicomputers in that, sure you can blindly go into hyperspace or jump, but as han said you could bounce too close to a supernova, or in BSG could jump into a star. in all 3 cases there was a hyperdrive/engine and a separate navigator/computer. it def. lost some of the interesting mythos when Ixian devices & synthetic spice became ubiquitous

5:40 It sounds like a good analogy is to think of the Holtzman engines as the engine of a car, and the prescient abilities of the navigators as a GPS. The former provides the means to reach a destination, and the latter calculates the optimum path to get there.

I've always thought the guild navigators were weird yet fascinating

Imagine the imperial planets after Paul's Jihad was unleashed. "My lord three guild highliners just entered orbit." "Very good. Pass around the cyanide pills."

Not to sound too nerdy, but the difference between warp drive and space folding (while similar ideas) is that the warp drive creates a bubble around a ship that warps the space (hence the name) and avoids violating the light speed limit by technically keeping the ship in one space while squeezing the ship through space by contracting and expanding the bubble... it basically propels the ships by causing space to squeeze it like a wet bar of soap. Space folding warps the space around in such a way that it causes a point to point movement instantaneously by folding space back on itself. At least... those are the theories right now.

Excellent video! It was well researched, highly analytical, and enlightening. You now have officially obtained Ph.D in the Dune universe!

Really well structured and paced presentation. You present enough information to answer my questions, without so much detail that you begin stirring thoughts like "why am I spending this much time positing something I'll never actually see?"

Can't wait for Part 2 to hit theaters. I hope we see space folding.

Great explanation

I am constantly having trouble wrapping my head around space folding.

Best channel,imho. I love Nerdy talk. Another awesome video.

I like to think and keep space folding (wormholes) and Alcubierre's "warp" drive (Star Trek) as separate things. Creating warp bubble seems more "realistic" physics to me than having wormholes folding space using huge amounts of negative energy.

Thanks..really been waiting for someone to go deeper with this aspect of DUNE..

Love your stuff as always !

Great video !!! Can’t wait for Dune Part 2 🔥

Do the books state what it’s like for the Navigators to do this? Is it taxing? Is it exhilarating? Is it a nuisance that distracts them from how they otherwise spend their time? Do they work in shifts? Is there one per ship? Do they get compensated, other than their spice needs?

"We have just folded space from Ix. Many machines on Ix. New machines. Better than those on Richese."

THANK YOU I've been waiting for this video and the way you broke it down was excellent. I have also had to school people on the topic of No the navigators do NOT fold space it is the Holtzman engine on the Heighliner. One question though your research does it tell you who developed it the IX the Spacing Guild or someone else? I will be joining this site next month you are my go to for all things DUNE...

I love the work Frank Herbert has done. Dune, imho, is his masterpiece. The various movies and tv franchises have proven out how influencial he was/is in science fiction.

Awesome!! Thanks. Really pumping out the videos. I approve :)

For the record, I like your new baground music as much as the old.

With a universe as big as ours, you should think that in there somewhere is a possibility build in to travel further than your own solar system. What else would be the point of that vastness? That forms of course a main concept in many SF story, though the main problem perseveres: how to travel space without screwing with the time-concept? Often we see that part simply ignored, but, as said, I am sure the universe has some kind of answer in there, we just haven't found it yet

Interesting video. Thank you.

Don’t recall where I heard the interpretation but the navigator would “envision” their ship in its current position, and envision their ship where they wanted it then through act of will would “transfer reality” from one vision to the other. And they would be there. Traveling without moving.

Great Video!

as i recall the term folding space is not used in the first books, but the prescience to see ways to move or travel through space that is folded is the main work of the Guild but I may be wrong read many many DUNE books commentaries and magazines and fan pages but I am not an expert

Folding space would need precision within 0.000001 in all 4D space. Or else you can pop out closer to the Sun than Mercury, or overshoot the target beyond the orbit of Pluto.

I'd like to see early experimentation with this. Like how it was before the navigators, what led them to think pumping someone full of drugs may be the answer, how that early process happened because I don't think it would of been a one and done thing. And could there be lost groups that managed to survive in some unknown corner of the universe because an early Navigator or maybe something right before that shot off a large enough ship with the right tech/supplies to make wherever they ended up.

...the reason that "the Kessell run in less than 12 parsecs" always seemed reasonable to me. You have some way of resolving the speed....maybe the "drive" is considered constant and the other part of the mechanism is a spacetime alteration. Sure....why not. Also, light sabers are obviously neutron/antineutron pairs encapsulated within the handle by the force and released to interact and annihilate. A new fundamental force, called the Force force, effects entangled pairs of particles and determines where and when they annihilate.

In the superior SpiceDiver edit of Lynch"s film Irulan and Reverend Mother Ramallo both emphasise that the spice helps the guild navigate. The depiction of the steersman creating representations of the entry and exit points takes place as Paul states, in their control rooms of spice gas. So what we see isn't the navigator folding space literally but operating visual controls.

Thanks Elaine

"There is a fifth force which shaped religious belief, but its effect is so universal and profound that it deserves to stand alone...it deserves to be written thus: SPACE TRAVEL!" -- Unknown

Its ironic you made tgis video, Xbox just announced a Dune dlc for Microsoft Flight simulator.

As interesting as the different descriptions and depictions are the real-world description of the "warp bubble" is essentially how Alcubierre scientifically described the effect of a "warp drive" as he was attempting to engineer or mathematically define the operations of a Star Trek warp engine. The compression of local space-time is also how the "warp drive" was stated to work within the Star Trek franchise by creating the localized bubble that essentially moves the ship without it truly moving in the physical sense. Using a semi-realistic descriptor also sounds like a better way to define how a Heighliner's "fold space" engines operate, but a closer analogy could be the slipspace engines of "Andromeda" which required a living pilot to safely navigate the "tunnels" of slipstream since both require a "controller" to safely and accurately "intuit" the safest path between two points

The depiction I personally like is the one seen in the miniseries

To point out one important thing about the Alcubierre drive that many aspiring sci-fi authors like to miss, while relativity indeed does not forbid its principle, it would very much still be time travel just as any other method of effective FTL travel (as soon as you move faster from A to B than a beam of light would travel that distance the "regular" way, there will be some frame of reference from which you will have arrived before you left), so whatever FTL method Dune uses, it still very much breaks relativity, just a different part of it.

Thank you for clarifying the Dune/Herbert canon and lore vs. Lynch's 1984 film version. I don't blame Lynch for that at all. He was trying to film Dune and used that exposition to introduce the Atriedes relocation to Arrakis from Caladan. TL;DR Two other scifi version of FTL travel that might interest you: - Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War," where FTL relativity rears its ugly head and profoundly affects society. We see that through the experiences of the draftees in that war as they return to earth centuries after they left yet subjectively only a few years after departing. Do two tours and you are thousands of years from _when_ you were born, making you still quite human, yet an alien in background, culture, language, and society when returning home. And it gets weirder the more tours you complete (not optionally complete - these are draftees with a high casualty rate and an enemy you cannot communicate with). Joe Haldeman's work has very much a hard science-y underlay to his excellent storytelling. - David Drake's "RCN" series -- Republic of Cinnabar Navy -- where the ships use sails *not* to catch photons, rather, to adapt to "Casimir radiation" and slip among bubble universes since the ship becomes a separate "universe" itself during this travel. Travel is not instantaneous, yet is shortened, so galaxy to galaxy trips might see you back home in weeks or months, including whatever you did in the faraway galaxy. In Drake's universe with its Casimir Radiation, this means you have a deck crew that must go topside and manually handle the sails. Also, number of those sails and their position in the absolute and relative to one another impacts the space folding, length of voyage, number of bubble universe one slips through, etc. The RCN series qualifies as space opera-ish, yet the characters and situations they are in are very familiar.

And that is really only one of say three problems I had with the new Dune movie the High-liner is one of my favorite vessels in sci-fi and it is not a star gate nor akin to a Star Trek warp drive. Star gates are fixed point that can open wormholes or other kinds of hyper-spacial tunnels to another fixed gate fast but not instant. Space folding isn't just the ship in a space that is moving, its that the spacefolder never actually moves. Of course it's moving but in a way that is instant the navigator just picks the path in which that instant shift takes place. The personal messenger for Royalty in Dune is the fastest way to send a message to another system. Your courier simple rides the High-liner takes a shuttle down hand delivers the message.

It's a very abstract concept. Not easily explained in a tangible way. It would probably look very prosaic in all reality. Uninteresting. Cheers for the vid.

Herbert named them navigators, not pilots, and not literal warp engines or warp conduits or stargates. That should be the clue for writers, directors, even the actors. What is memorizing is the massive scale at play. Seeing what appears to be the diminutive emperor's envoy ship to Caladan to award the Dune fiefdom, leaving the confines of the highliner, suddenly loom over the Atreides spaceport was just staggering.

The physical method of travel via folding space is more akin to quantum tunneling. There particles cease to exist in one location and; because of conservation of matter and energy, exist in another location, the chosen location that the navigator enabled to arrive at.

I've wondered if you were ever interested in doing some kind of comparison video between Dune and Warhammer 40K, as Warhammer has clearly taken quite a few inspirations from the Dune universe, warp travel with Navigators being a great example. As always, I enjoy your content and thank you for your hard work.

Thank you

I remember an explanation of space folding of actually folding one part of space onto another and the ships move between the folded planes, so like a piece of paper, fold it in half and a ship on one side could just move to the other, unfold, and you're there.

If Microscopic Black Holes could be generated and controlled you could conceivably modulate them into fields to generate compressed and tensed regions of space. Perhaps as simple as a poloidal field running through the center of the freighter. The convergent pole compresses space in front and the divergent pole stretches space in back. It would be necessary to gravitically entangle the MBHs on the back pole on order to stretch the space between the MBHs and have negative energy density in the back. You would need a new science of gravitic mechanics to grow out of quantum mechanics and relativity.

The Schlepping Guild also have an unfortunate tendency, when there's a disturbance in the Nether Region, to trim and shove space too. Puts one in a foul mood, so it does.

Is the space folding the expansion of space behind the craft? And the decreasing of the space in front of it?. Or is it folded like a sheet of paper taking one point that's far away and connecting it with another and put a hole through them like event horizon style. How would you get a point that so far away you can't travel to it using normal methods but somehow get it to fold over to where you are

In some of Asimov's books on dealing with hyperdrive, the movement is instantaneous but the ship still follows a virtual path subject to the influence of everying from pount a to point b meaning the you needed to take them in account less you appear in the wtong place possibly to your peril.

Even navigating a regular spacecraft at sublight speeds is challenging, and we have computers to help us, which they don't in Dune. Now imagine trying to navigate through non-euclidian geometry without any technological assistance. You have to literally be able to see the future to get there in one piece. I mean, the universe is vast so just finding a precise point in space as a destination untold trillions of miles away would be tough The lore from the prequels had it that one in ten ships never made their jump coordinates during the Jihad, and that was with sophisticated navigation computers. Doesn't sound too bad, but that is significant attrition over time for both military and commercial operations. Thousands of people would have perished with each misjump. A fleet might lose it's commanding officer in such a way, and there goes their leadership at the worst time. I can see why they thought Navigators were a great idea

Funny , Dune in a way technically has it's own version of a literal worm hole

What do ya say a little spice? -Scanlan Shorthalt.

Hiya El ! I've had some thoughts on what might be go going on with DV's version of folding space, thought you might think like it........I reckon that because DV's favourite book is Dune ( same as me, grew up on it )' he hinted that the Holtzman effect will be explained in pt2. I don't think it's a porthole as we see in in pt1, it's the Holzman effect of the human eye, because the ship, technically, is in 2 places at once to us. Not the ship itself. We can't see space, time, gravity. Huh ? Lol x

I love the current movie's folding of space it looks so eerie and strange

I always viewed guild navigators more like a nav computer in sci fi. Just plotting the path for the vessel to go safely.

According to the book, a Guild Steersman could only perform the task but a few times in a lifetime. That's it.

It's a classical example of "show, don't tell" : it's only a vague description on how space travel achieved, with constraints that imply a monopoly by a guilde. The specifics are not really relevant to the story. This way, the reader can fill in the specifics according to his culture and knowledge, the story does not depend too much on the culture of its time and ages well.

In the movie, it appears that the heighliner is itself the wormhole/Stargate.

Nice!!😎

the space folding idea presented in Dune has always given me a problem. there's nothing to run into when 2 points of spacetime are joined by a fold, at least not that my seedling mind can fathom. that's going from one place to another without physical linear movement. it seems to me a localized manipulation of time could transport anything anywhere in the expanding universe. the universe is bigger today then yesterday, things are different places at different times. a change of time changes location. Norma could fold space without a ship. sometimes I get the 1984 film details mixed up with the book.

Is there no time dilation in space folding?

What kills me in that lots of sci-fi would use AI to help calculate travel such as this. But as we all know the Butlerian Jihad ended that. DUNE, Warhammer 40K, The Matrix....so many futures where AI has become either problematic or outrightly persecuted.

So I find it ironic that the whole point of (or at least one of the main points) of giving up and banning AI was to stop and remove humans from been slaves to computers so what do humans go and do we go find Spice so we can become slaves to that instead, I also find it odd that lots of Dune fans miss this point when the books spell it out quite clearly, we renounced one mater then sort out another to replace it.

So I’ve been curious for a while, maybe you could do a video on it, what exactly happened to earth in the duniverse? Has it been abandoned or destroyed? Does anyone still live there, has it been so long that maybe humanity doesn’t even remember our home planet

I'm not sure that Villenueve was representing the heighliners as a portal, though - at least that's not how I interpreted it. I took it as the smaller ships were held within the heighliner and flew out upon reaching their destination which would be in line with the book. Granted he didn't go into detail regarding how FTL travel worked, but for what it's worth, portal wasn't what I immediately jumped to.

Nice

I think the new movies are depicting it right. When the Highliner appears over Arakis, it is pretty obvious that it wasn't there before.

Is there any chance Frank Herbert got the idea of Dune after coming in contact with Aliens. Ufos were very famous during the time. 😂

So space folding navigators are navigating using their brains highly upgraded by consuming spice melange to read highly complicated spatial maps ....?

My garden is full of worm holes.

I like villnues. In the way that it created a non Euclidean space

Why didn't the Spacing Guild stop the Ixan's before their folding machine was ready?

Humans will never be able to travel faster than light... until we can. 😊

I would make a lousy Guild navigator. I don't even like folding towels.

Folding space-time consum a very huge amount of energy theoretically Which is not mentioned

Villeneuve representing a guild high liner as a portal is just one more of the many examples of his utter disrespect for the source material. Human nature, and commerce & competition being what it is, why did not alternate guild develop. Or why would the Emperor not fund a long term, multi generational program to set up an alt guild under his direct control?

The hot wings must flow…

What would a Shai-Halud that could live in space look like?

Weren’t the Navigators the result of the ban on computers?

Your explanation for folded space being similar to warped space is incorrect. A warp drive allows a vessel to approach relativistic speeds by manipulating the space fabric so as not to be limited by the effects of mass traversing through spacetime (the alcubierre drive still moves through space like a boat travelling through a current). Folded space is more akin to a wormhole joining two points in space without moving mass through spacetime, a concept that Villeneuve demonstrates in his movie

Actually, space folding would more closely resemble an Einstein-Rosen bridge, ie a wormhole, which would connect two points in space-time. You could pass between them in an instant. I envision the SG Holtzman engines creating an artificial Einstein-Rosen bridge, but the navigator still has to chart a course due to the immense complexity of dropping a huge vessel like a heighliner inside a planets gravity well. The Alcubierre 'warp drive', is more akin to the magical warp drive in the Star Trek franchises, and not the Holtzman engine, which is clearly doing something along quite different lines.

Travelling without moving

You don't choose space drug worm life space drug worm life chooses you

Why does Alcubierre get credit for "inventing" a theoretically plausible FTL drive that Gene Roddenberry came up with in the 1960s?

The distance between point A and point B = 0

The basic principles

Jump drive from Battlestar.