In Avatar, what mineral are humans mining on Pandora?

In James Cameron’s Avatar, humans are mining unobtanium on Pandora. The fictional mineral is extremely valuable because it has unusual superconducting properties, making it a powerful economic reason for the human expedition and its conflict with the Na’vi.

The mining operation is run by the Resources Development Administration, commonly called the RDA. Its extraction plans threaten Pandora’s ecosystems and the Na’vi home of Hometree. The mineral therefore functions not only as a plot device but also as a symbol of colonial resource exploitation.

“Unobtanium” is a longstanding engineering joke and informal term for a material with impossible or highly desirable properties. Avatar uses the word literally as the name of a valuable substance. It is not the same as a real chemical element, and the film does not assign it a standard atomic number or place on the periodic table.