Life imitates art and art imitates life. Therefore, it is common to find similarities between facts and plots of famous works, and vice versa. It could not be different in the film “Avatar”, by James Cameron.
Throughout history, a valuable and mysterious stone can do very interesting things. But this concept, titled “unobtanium“, is already known to real-life scientists.
‘Avatar II’
After 13 long years of waiting, the movie “Avatar” is back with everything with an incredible three hours and twelve minutes of pure masterpiece!
In total, $2.923 billion was collected at the box office. In addition, the reviews for the new film were a success, which leads us to conclude that the time spent sitting in the cinema was totally worth it for the viewers.
However, the topic of the moment does not revolve around “Avatar: The Way of Water”, but rather, the 2009 film, the first “Avatar”. In it, the main element of the story is the mineral known as “unobtanium”, a rare and valuable metal found on the planet Pandora.
This material is very important for life to persist there, since the mineral is highly conductive, which reduces energy costs and waste to very high levels. This discovery was essential, since natural resources were practically exhausted in that universe.
What is ‘Unobtanium’?
Contrary to what many people think, “unobtanium” is not the fruit of James Cameron’s imagination. The concept really exists and is common among scientists and engineers.
In 1957, NASA space engineer James R. Hansen, in his experiments, stated the lack of a material that was capable of withstanding high temperatures and then named this non-existent material “unobtanium”.
As time went by, “unobtanium” became a sort of “inside joke” among scientists. Whenever they talked about elements that were very difficult to find or that had not yet been discovered, they called them “unobtanium.”
Which makes perfect sense, since the term means “unreachable”. Thus, unlike the film, which actually found its “unobtanium”, in the real world it is just a concept that refers to something that no one has managed to obtain yet.
