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Not on the Periodic Table - TV Tropes

️Sat Jun 15 2024

Thinking outside the box.

Daniel Jackson: These images are graphical representation of the basic elements: electrons revolving around a proton. The number of electrons indicate the element.

Earnest Littlefield: 146.

Catherine Langford: There is only currently 111 elements on the periodic table.

Earnest Littlefield: Only 90 when I last looked.

Writers of speculative fiction often need a convenient shorthand to communicate to their audience, or their characters, that they've stumbled upon something not of this planet we know as Earth. One of the ways in which writers who don't quite get how chemistry or its underlying physics works will do so is to have the characters realize that something they've discovered is made from material that doesn't exist on "our" Periodic Table of Elements, and that's just another way of saying "it isn't found on Earth."

Hearing this statement is likely to make any chemist listening perform a Facepalm. To make a long story short, very specific organizations of subatomic particles, dictated by the fundamental laws of physics, govern how elements form, and these same elements are found everywhere in the universe. Saying "our" periodic table like it's unique to Earth is just as accurate as saying "our" law of gravity — as if once you leave Earth, things with mass are no longer attracted to each other.

May be justified if an alien race's materials science is advanced enough to create synthetic baryons. Baryons (protons and neutrons) make up all atomic nuclei, and if you could make something similar to a proton that could bond in atoms the same way protons do, but had different properties than a proton, the resulting element would be very different from what we're familiar with, and would not "fit" on the periodic table.^note Theoretically, at least.

There's also a theorized "island of stability" much higher on the periodic table than we currently have knowledge of. Such elements could be created by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and would have properties we can only imagine (again, in theory). However, those would still fit on "our" periodic table, just far beyond the ones we've discovered and synthesized. You can count its protons, neutrons, and electrons, and thus come up with its atomic number, and thus where it should fit on the periodic table. For instance, X-COM: UFO Defense pegged Elerium as having an atomic number of 115 (making it an Averted Trope, the alien element does fit on "our" periodic table). We've since discovered Element 115, and it sadly is nothing like Elerium.

This can also occur due to basically a semantic error. Some see "periodic table," and think only of what's printed in a chemistry textbook or hanging on the wall of a chemistry lab or classroom. As of this writing, this periodic table contains 118 elements in order, so the discovery of element 119 would, technically, be discovering something "not on the periodic table." However, the periodic table exists as it does because it is a framework to classify and understand the elements and their properties, so anything that is ever discovered in the future should fit somewhere on it, barring material from alternate realities or synthetic subatomic particles. According to the first definition, saying a new element is "not on the periodic table" is technically correct... but also not entirely accurate. However, barring a hypothetical "island of stability" (as mentioned above), once you get to berkelium (element 97) the stability of each isotope starts to go downhill. Berkelium's most stable isotope (berkelium-247) has a half-life of 1380 years, and the heaviest known element (as of June 2024) is Oganesson (element 118), of which (as of 2024) we've only produced 5 atoms, and they disintegrated in microseconds. So under our current understanding of chemistry discovering a new element would be very interesting... and of no practical utility, since this element would disappear instantly.

Additionally, having an element "not present" on Earth is also extremely implausible. Elements are formed by nucleosynthesis in stars, fusing lighter elements to form heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, iron, etc. Eventually when stars die even more complex and heavier elements are formed like gold and uranium. Solar systems form in accretion disks from all this (literal) "stardust".^note As a rule, as you get closer to a galactic center, the ratio of heavy elements get bigger and bigger. This is because the inner "neighborhood" of a galaxy has had more generations of stars and thus had more opportunities to build up these heavier elements. There's no reason why some elements would show up in one star system and not show up in the neighboring ones.

Subtrope of Artistic License – Chemistry and Not of This Earth. Note that this trope is not for materials that are just "unknown" (that's Not of This Earth)... the substance in question must be noted to be "not on our periodic table" or otherwise reference an unknown chemical element to qualify. A new element that does not fit on the periodic table may be Unobtainium. See also Parodic Table of the Elements.

Examples:

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Fan Works

Justified in Superman: House of El. Kryptonite (in all its various forms) is stated to be something created through Kryptonian superscience creating synthetic elementary particles, so is not composed of subatomic particles known to human science, and so does not "fit" on the Periodic Table. Kryptonian science was so advanced they created matter to match exactly what they needed. This also led to Krypton's destruction; the changes to ordinary matter propagated toward Krypton's core, the new elements didn't react well to the heat and pressure, and Krypton exploded. This is the main reason why Clark and Keira are very wary about sharing Kryptonian science and technology with humanity.

Films — Live-Action

Battleship: Debris from a crashed alien probe is found to be made of an exotic alloy whose only identifiable element is lawrencium.
Captain Marvel (2019): The Skrulls are not carbon-based life, but based on "something not found on our periodic table." Nick Fury replies that means "he's not from around here."
Man of Steel: Jonathan Kent tells Clark that he had the "key" for Clark's spaceship analyzed at the university, and was told it doesn't match anything on the periodic table.
Jonathan: That's just another way of saying it's not from this planet.
Predator 2: Harrigan gets a piece of Predator tech and has it analyzed at the crime lab. The analysis confirms that whatever material it's made of, it has "almost no weight" but "cuts like steel" doesn't correspond to anything on the periodic table. Zig-Zagged in that Harrigan and Lambert's first thought isn't "alien" but "military."
Harrigan: Either something that got away from them or something they want real bad.

Literature

Battlefield Earth: When Johnnie is learning the Periodic Table, he realizes that there are discrepancies between the Earth and Psychlo table because they have different elements on their planets.
"The Colour Out of Space". When heated in a spectroscope, a meteorite displays bands of color outside the normal spectrum. The scientists studying it suspect that it's made of a new element not on the periodic table.
Subverted in H. Beam Piper's Omnilingual, in which a Martian periodic table acts as a Rosetta Stone for the extinct alien race's language. Because the chemical elements are the same between the two planets, so there's a point of commonality for translation.
Selim von Ohlmhorst: How do you know that their table of elements was anything like ours?
Mort Tranter: That isn’t just the Martian table of elements; that’s the table of elements. It’s the only one there is
Averted in "Project Hail Mary". The protagonist makes first contact with an alien species, and they throw him a cylinder made of a mysterious substance. This substance turns out to be what Ryland dubs "xenonite", aka solid xenon. As he says, this is entirely impossible with our current understanding of noble gases, but xenon is an element on the periodic table.
In the first book of Edmond Hamilton's Starwolf series, the hero scans samples of some strange technology, yet all the results for composition are empty. Turns out these were salvaged from a ship that came from another galaxy, which appears to have its own periodic table (probably means the atoms are composed of different particles, which probably wouldn't happen in just a different galaxy).

Live-Action TV

Itch: Revolves around the Title Character discovering Element 126, a seemingly ordinary rock that contains radioactivity.
Subverted in Stargate SG-1. Early in the first season, they come across a site that seems to have been a meeting place for four different alien races, complete with holograms of the chemical elements. Daniel quickly realizes that this could be a truly universal language, as the key component for such would be to break statements down into the most fundamental elements the communicating parties have in common. . . and the chemical elements are as fundamental and common as you can get.
Star Trek: Discovery: Burnham and Tilly are amazed when a sample of an asteroid Burnham tried to collect was rejected by the transporter, this means the sample must have been non-baryonic matter (and as such, the transporter wouldn't have recognized it as "matter" or known how to reassemble it even if it did). Baryons are subatomic particles we're familiar with, such as protons and neutrons, thus matter composed of particles that aren't baryons is only theoretically plausible. . . actually having held some in her hand makes Science Officer Michael Burnham positively giddy.

Video Games

Arknights — which is set on a vaguely Earth-like planet named Terra — has had a crossover with Rainbow Six Siege where some of that game's Earth-born humans are transported to Terra, and they run into serious logistical problems because it transpires that the universe of Terra has a significantly different periodic table of elements and thus literally can't reverse-engineer even something as relatively simple as the gunpowder that is essential for firearm operation (Terrans have to literally rework the Earthlings' weapons to use their own Originium-based ammo).
The Station: One of the charts you can find exploring the station is a comparison between the elements the race on the planet discovered and the elements the race that built The Station discovered, with the second chart obviously having more elements. This is actually foreshadowing that The Station was built by aliens observing the Earth, since the first chart shows our periodic table.
Team Fortress 2: Australium is an element in universe that provides Australians (and anybody else with close contact to it over a number of years) with enhanced strength and intelligence, and if utilised correctly can provide immortality. Interestingly, it has the same electron count as gold and it is unclear if it is meant to replace gold or if gold simply has a different electron count in universe. Supplementary materials show that it has two kangaroos boxing in its nucleus, implying it may be an isotope of gold.

Webcomics

Grrl Power: Subverted. Deus (with great difficulty) manages to find the geode that contained the substance that gave Maxima her powers. He didn't find anything particularly interesting, just a few exotic isotopes that probably aren't from Earth, "but nothing we've never seen before." The Rant specifically mentions that the idea of elements not on the periodic table is silly, since we have the periodic table pretty well mapped out.

Websites

In the "Professor E. Gadd's Research Journal" segments on Nintendo's main website released to promote the 2018 remake of Luigi's Mansion, it's stated that Gooigi was created from the chemical element "Goo", which is assigned the number zero on the periodic table.
The SCP Foundation contains a poster of the periodic table (SCP-2046) with a slowly expanding catalog of additional elements in impossible locations on the table (including above it). Atoms in proximity to the table are randomly transmuted into these fictional elements, which decay instantly because they can't exist in our universe. A few SCP documents, including 2046, mention that the Foundation has its own expanded version of the periodic table, though it has never been shown.

Western Animation

Phineas and Ferb: "Vanessassary Roughness" has Pizzazzium Infinionite, which appears as a footnote in the periodic table, as opposed to the main part of it with the other elements.
"The Simpsons": In "Lisa Gets An A", it's revealed that the Springfield school is forced to resort to Oscar Mayer's promotional periodic tables due to being unable to buy actual ones, with the Oscar Mayer tables using ridiculous terms such as "delicious" and "snacktacular".
Super Giant Robot Brothers!: In "The Hand of Fate", Thunder states that the Kalaxian Obliterator is made of "an element that isn't on the periodic table".
Superman: The Animated Series: In "A Little Piece of Home", Lex Luthor's scientists remark that whilst most of the meteor samples they've collected is ordinary carbon based material, the glowing green chunk of kryptonite inside has a composition that's "not even on the periodic table!".
Trollhunters: In "Hero with a Thousand Faces", Vendel and Blinkus bring out a projection device and demonstrate that trolls find the human periodic table amusing as trolls have a much, much bigger one — the projection device shows the human periodic table which floats in front of Jim's face but it shrinks away to just a branch on the much bigger troll table which takes up the entire room they are in.

Real Life

Helium was first discovered when its spectrum lines were observed in the Sun's corona during a solar eclipse in 1868. This inspired other scientists to spuriously discover and name several other elements allegedly occurring only on the Sun. Though there were spectroscopic reports of terrestrial helium as early as 1880, it could not be assigned a place on the periodic table until the 1890s, when the other noble gases were discovered, since its physical and chemical properties were completely unmeasurable without an actual sample.