In James Cameron’s Avatar, humans seek to mine unobtanium on Pandora.
Unobtanium is a fictional mineral with extraordinary value because of its superconducting properties. The Resources Development Administration, the human organization operating on Pandora, wants to extract it and transport it away from the moon. Deposits beneath the Na’vi’s forest home make the mining project especially destructive.
The word “unobtanium” is older than Avatar. Engineers and scientists have used it informally for an idealized material that has exactly the properties a design requires but is difficult or impossible to obtain. Cameron’s film turns that engineering joke into a specific fictional resource.
The mineral is not the same as vibranium, kryptonite, or dilithium, which belong to other fictional universes. Avatar uses unobtanium to give the film’s military and corporate conflict a concrete economic motive.