In
engineeringEngineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
,
fictionFiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
, and
thought experimentA thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...
s,
unobtainium (also spelled
unobtanium, and sometimes
handwavium) is any extremely rare, costly, or impossible material, or (less commonly) device needed to fulfill a given design for a given application. The properties of any particular unobtainium depend on the intended use. For example, a pulley made of unobtainium might be massless and frictionless; however, if used in a
nuclear rocketNuclear propulsion includes a wide variety of propulsion methods that fulfil the promise of the Atomic Age by using some form of nuclear reaction as their primary power source.- Surface ships and submarines :...
, unobtainium would be light, strong at high temperatures, and resistant to radiation damage. The concept of unobtainium is often applied flippantly or humorously.
The word
unobtainium is derived from
unobtainable +
-ium (the suffix for a number of
metalA metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...
elements). It pre-dates the similar-sounding IUPAC
systematic element nameA systematic element name is the temporary name and symbol assigned to newly synthesized and not yet synthesized chemical elements. In chemistry, a transuranic element receives a permanent name and symbol only after its synthesis has been confirmed. In some cases, this has been a protracted and...
s, such as
UnunoctiumUnunoctium is the temporary IUPAC name for the transactinide element having the atomic number 118 and temporary element symbol Uuo. It is also known as eka-radon or element 118, and on the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block element and the last one of the 7th period. Ununoctium is...
.
Engineering origin
Since the late 1950s, aerospace engineers have used the term
"unobtainium" when referring to unusual or costly materials, or when theoretically considering a material perfect for their needs in all respects, except that it does not exist. By the 1990s, the term was in wide use, even in formal engineering papers such as "Towards unobtainium
[new composite materials for space applications
]."
The word
unobtainium may well have been coined in the aerospace industry to refer to materials capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures expected in
reentryAtmospheric entry is the movement of human-made or natural objects as they enter the atmosphere of a celestial body from outer space—in the case of Earth from an altitude above the Kármán Line,...
.
Aerospace engineersAerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is divided into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering...
are frequently tempted to design aircraft which require parts with strength or resilience beyond that of currently available materials.
Later,
unobtainium became an engineering term for practical materials that really exist, but are difficult to get. For example, during the development of the
SR-71 BlackbirdThe Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by the Lockheed Skunk Works. Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was responsible for many of the...
spy plane,
LockheedThe Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace company. Lockheed was founded in 1912 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.-Origins:...
engineers at the "
Skunk WorksSkunk Works is an official alias for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs , formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Skunk Works is responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs, including the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk, and the F-22 Raptor...
" under Clarence "Kelly" Johnson used
unobtainium as a
dysphemismIn language, dysphemism, malphemism, and cacophemism refer to the usage of an intentionally harsh, rather than polite, word or expression; roughly the opposite of euphemism...
for
titaniumTitanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It has a low density and is a strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant transition metal with a silver color....
. Titanium allowed a higher strength-to-weight ratio at the high temperatures the Blackbird would reach, but the
Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
controlled its supply and was trying to deprive the US armed forces of this valuable resource.
Relatively large amounts of titanium are used in aircraft such as the F-15, F-18, and F-22 fighters and the B-1 bomber. Eventually, through a European front company, a large quantity of titanium found its way to the United States.
With the 1996 discovery of the FFC Cambridge processThe FFC Cambridge Process is an electrochemical method in which solid metal compounds, particularly oxides, are cathodically reduced to the respective metals or alloys in molten salts. It is thought that this process will eventually be capable of producing metals or alloys more efficiently than...
, titanium became more readily obtainable. Large deposits of titanium dioxideTitanium dioxide, also known as titanium oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891. Generally it comes in two different forms, rutile and anatase. It has a wide range of...
, usually in the form of sand, exist in places such as Florida, and those deposits are mined there. Metallic titanium is obtained by heating titanium dioxide with metallic sodium or potassium in an inert atmosphere, such as argon.
In the 1970s, bicycle magazines, such as
Bike World, sometimes referred to exotic lightweight bicycle parts as being made of unobtanium, although while expensive they were commercially obtainable.
Contemporary popularization
As of 2010, the term has diffused beyond engineering, and appears in the headlines of mainstream newspapers, especially to describe the commercially useful rare earth elements (particularly
terbiumTerbium is a chemical element with the symbol Tb and atomic number 65. It is a silvery-white rare earth metal that is malleable, ductile and soft enough to be cut with a knife...
,
erbiumErbium is a chemical element in the lanthanide series, with the symbol Er and atomic number 68. A silvery-white solid metal when artificially isolated, natural erbium is always found in chemical combination with other elements on Earth...
,
dysprosiumDysprosium is a chemical element with the symbol Dy and atomic number 66. It is a rare earth element with a metallic silver luster. Dysprosium is never found in nature as a free element, though it is found in various minerals, such as xenotime...
,
yttriumYttrium is a chemical element with symbol Y and atomic number 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal chemically similar to the lanthanides and it has often been classified as a "rare earth element". Yttrium is almost always found combined with the lanthanides in rare earth minerals and is...
, and
neodymiumNeodymium is a chemical element with the symbol Nd and atomic number 60. It is a soft silvery metal that tarnishes in air. Neodymium was discovered in 1885 by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach. It is present in significant quantities in the ore minerals monazite and bastnäsite...
). These are essential to the performance of
consumer electronicsConsumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...
and green technology, but the projected
demandIn economics, demand is the desire to own anything, the ability to pay for it, and the willingness to pay . The term demand signifies the ability or the willingness to buy a particular commodity at a given point of time....
for them so outstrips their current supply that they are called 'unobtainiums' within the
ore industryExtractive metallurgy is the study of the processes used in the separation and concentration of raw materials. The field is an applied science, covering all aspects of the physical and chemical processes used to produce mineral-containing and metallic materials, sometimes for direct use as a...
, and by commentators on the US Congressional hearings into the "supply security" of rare-earths.
"Unobtainium" has come to be used as a synonym for "unobtainable" among people who are neither science fiction fans nor engineers, to denote an object that actually exists, but which is very hard to obtain either because of high price (sometimes referred to as "unaffordium") or limited availability. It usually refers to a very high-end and desirable product:.
e.g., in the
mountain bikingMountain biking is a sport which consists of riding bicycles off-road, often over rough terrain, using specially adapted mountain bikes. Mountain bikes share similarities with other bikes, but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and performance in rough terrain.Mountain biking can...
communityThe term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
, "These
titaniumTitanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It has a low density and is a strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant transition metal with a silver color....
hubs are unobtainium, man!". Old-car enthusiasts use "unobtainium" to describe parts that are vanishingly rare or no longer available.
In maintaining old equipment,
unobtainium refers to replacement parts that are no longer made, such as parts for reel-to-reel audio-tape recorders, or rare vacuum tubes that cost more than the equipment they are fitted to (especially true of certain vacuum tubes, such as the
1L6The 1L6 is a 7 pin miniature vacuum tube of the pentagrid converter type. It was developed in the USA by Sylvania. It is very similar electrically to its predecessors, the Loktal based 1LA6 and 1LC6...
, used exclusively in
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
battery-powered
shortwaveShortwave radio refers to the upper MF and all of the HF portion of the radio spectrum, between 1,800–30,000 kHz. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used...
radios).
There have been repeated attempts to attribute the name to a real material. Because of the long-standing usage of the term "unobtainium" within the
space elevatorA space elevator, also known as a geostationary orbital tether or a beanstalk, is a proposed non-rocket spacelaunch structure...
research community to describe a material with the necessary characteristics,
LiftPort GroupLiftPort Group is a privately held Washington State corporation. It was founded in April, 2003 by Michael J. Laine and is dedicated to creating cheap, reliable, and safe access to space. The company is focused on the construction of a space elevator using carbon nanotubes...
President Michael Laine has advocated assigning the term as the generic name for cables woven of
carbon nanotubeCarbon nanotubes are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure. Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, significantly larger than for any other material...
fibers, which seem to satisfy the requirements for this application. Since he claimed that sufficiently long nanotube cables will be prohibitively expensive to develop without inexpensive access to
microgravityThe term micro-g environment is more or less a synonym of weightlessness and zero-G, but indicates that g-forces are not quite zero, just very small...
, these cables would still be close enough to unobtainable to meet the definition. However, this usage does not seem to have become widespread. The eyewear and fashion wear company Oakley also frequently denotes the material used for many of their eyeglass nosepieces and earpieces, which has the unusual property of increasing tackiness and thus grip when wet, as unobtanium.
Frequent Sunday night/Monday morning host of
Coast to Coast AMCoast to Coast AM is a North American late-night syndicated radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics, but most frequently ones that relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It was created by Art Bell and is distributed by Premiere Radio Networks. The program currently...
George KnappGeorge Knapp is an award-winning American investigative journalist.A longtime fixture in Las Vegas media, he works at KLAS-TV and is also a frequent host of the Sunday night/Monday morning Coast To Coast AM syndicated radio show...
usually opens his show mentioning unobtainium.
Science fiction
Unobtainium can refer to any substance needed to build some device critical to the plot of a
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
story, but which does not exist in the universe as we know it. A hull material that gets stronger with pressure in the film
The CoreThe Core is a 2003 American disaster film loosely based on the novel Core by Paul Preuss. It concerns a team that has to drill to the center of the Earth and set off a series of nuclear explosions in order to restart the rotation of Earth's core...
was nicknamed
unobtainium, but the concept under different names can be seen in the anti-gravity material cavorite and the super-strong material scrith from
Larry NivenLaurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
's novel
RingworldRingworld is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. It is followed by three sequels, and preceded by four prequels, and ties into numerous other books set in Known Space...
, which requires a tensile strength on the order of the forces binding an
atomic nucleusThe nucleus is the very dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom. It was discovered in 1911, as a result of Ernest Rutherford's interpretation of the famous 1909 Rutherford experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, under the direction of Rutherford. The...
together.
Unobtainium can also refer to any rare but desirable material used to motivate a conflict over its possession, making it a
MacGuffinA MacGuffin is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is...
(it appears in the story as something to obtain, not something that is significantly used). An example is
unobtanium (sic - per traditional element naming not "unobtainium") in the film
Avatar, a mineral valued at "$20 million a kilo".
Unobtainium can be used in a disparaging context (e.g., "That idea is silly; you'd need unobtainium wires to hold the planet up!") or a hypothetical one ("If one were to build an unobtainium shell around a
black holeA black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
's event horizon, what would happen to the material piling up on it?").
Similar terms
The term
handwavium (suggesting
handwavingHandwaving is a pejorative label applied to the action of displaying the appearance of doing something, when actually doing little, or nothing. For example, it is applied to debate techniques that involve logical fallacies. It is also used in working situations where productive work is expected,...
) is another term for this hypothetical material, as are
buzzwordium,
phlebotinum, and
flangium.
The term
Eludium (also spelled with variants such as
Illudium) has been used to describe a material which has
eluded attempts to develop it.
Another largely synonymous term is
wishalloy, although the sense is often subtly different in that a wishalloy usually does not exist at all, whereas unobtainium may merely be unavailable.
A similar conceptual material in alchemy is the
Philosopher's StoneThe philosopher's stone is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals into gold or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal...
, a mythical substance with the ability to turn lead into gold or bestow immortality and youth. While the search to find such a substance was not successful, it did lead to discovery of a new substance -
PhosphorusPhosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...
.
See also
- Automagically
- Widget
The word widget is a placeholder name for an object or, more specifically, a mechanical or other manufactured device. It is an abstract unit of production. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "An indefinite name for a gadget or mechanical contrivance, esp. a small manufactured item" and...
- List of fictional elements, materials, isotopes and atomic particles
- Materials science in science fiction
Material science in science fiction is the study of how materials science is portrayed in works of science fiction. The accuracy of the materials science portrayed spans a wide range – sometimes it is an extrapolation of existing technology, sometimes it is a physically realistic portrayal of a...
- Adamant
Adamant and similar words are used to refer to any especially hard substance, whether composed of diamond, some other gemstone, or some type of metal. Both adamant and diamond derive from the Greek word αδαμας , meaning "untameable"...
- Mithril
Mithril is a fictional metal, originally used in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. It is described as silvery and stronger than steel but much lighter in weight. The malleability, lack of tarnishing and use of the metal in jewellery suggest some similarity to the non-fictional metal...
- Vibranium
Vibranium is a fictional metal that appears in the Marvel Universe. It is most commonly known as one of the materials used to construct Captain America's shield, but it is also noted for its connection to the Black Panther and his native homeland of Wakanda .-Publication history:Vibranium first...
External links