Comment by dotancohen
2 days ago
Novel materials - even those that occur naturally - are almost certainly molecules of elements that we already are familiar with. There might be some interesting things to find in the island of stability, but I'd say that practical FTL is a more plausible discovery than would be finding gross quantities of elements with 1000 protons.
You could perhaps find different concentrations of different isotopes of elements which could be useful. For some kind of super advanced material science/design.
Yes, isotopes too. Interesting point. Isotopes are sometimes just as novel as new elements - though I wouldn't consider their discovery to be expanding the periodic table.