Comment by dylan604
3 days ago
This has always been a sticky thing for me as well. These kinds of McGuffins lean towards physics are different in other parts of the galaxy/universe if there are minerals found only in certain parts of the galaxy. That would also imply there are other elements that we do not have on our periodic table. Unless someone has become able to stabilize some of the unstable elements to keep them around long enough to make some sort of material out of them, there's only so much unobtanium or dilithium nonsense I'm willing to accept.
> These kinds of McGuffins lean towards physics are different in other parts of the galaxy/universe if there are minerals found only in certain parts of the galaxy.
Or the local conditions are such that they produce different chemical compounds.
I'm not going to strike gold in my backyard, but people in Colorado might. There's not a lot of diamond production happening within reach underneath my location, but there's plenty in parts of Africa.
If we want to take it to space, there's not a lot of Helium-3 to be easily extracted on Earth, but apparently there's quite a bit more on the Moon.