UNOBTANIUM
A material that is unobtainable, often because it doesn't exist.
The name — often also spelled as unobtainium — combines unobtainable with the -ium suffix that marks the names of chemical elements. It refers to some useful material that suffers from the serious disadvantage that it either doesn’t (yet) exist, or that it does exist but is so rare that even folding money can’t get you any. It’s a potent excuse for non-delivery: if only you had some unobtanium, you say apologetically, creating the required result would be easy-peasy; without it, it’s impossible. The appeal of the word unobtanium is so great that at least two manufacturers in the US have in recent years used it for their products — for example, a maker of sunglasses has trademarked it for earpieces. You might regard this as a triumph of the forces of promotion and PR over those of technology. The firm claims a first use of the name in 1987. However, the term is known from the motor racing world in the 1970s, as a humorous way of explaining why specialist spare parts were so expensive — they were made from unobtanium.
One must be careful to distinguish between unobtanium and handwavium. Unobtanium is something that might conceivably exist. Contrariwise, handwavium refers to a way of circumventing a problem by breaking the laws of physics, as if one might banish an insuperable objection by waving a hand at it. Bad science-fiction stories often employ handwavium to solve knotty problems. Star Trek is full of such devices, such as the replicator, the transporter or the phaser (which disintegrates a person neatly without a hint of energy release or even a puff of steam). Any writer who creates a faster-than-light space drive, for example, is employing handwavium, though this device is so consecrated by its widespread use and utility as to be acceptable within the SF genre.
