In No Man’s Sky, one of the most popular video games in recent years, you are tasked to explore the universe chasing down dozens of elements real and fictional, the most expensive and sought after of which is…. yes, you are on the indium page. Presumably selected for its exotic-sounding name, the game developers are probably as familiar with this metal as they are with other in-game commodities such as ‘nitrogen salt’ and antimatter. But who are we to complain if even a small percentage of the millions of players learn of the Periodic Table this way? Count me as a fan!

In real life, indium may be a little too mundane of a resource to merit interstellar travel but it definitely possesses some extraordinary qualities. The first of these is the incredible softness; allowing someone with a rod of this material to pull off Hulk-like bending tricks with the utmost of ease to the bewilderment of any present spectators. To this we can also add a very high degree of resistance to corrosion. Indium also has one of the lowest toxicity profiles of a metallic element rivaling in this regard members of the platinum group. Finally, this element does nab one ‘rarest’ title. Mineralogists note it as perhaps the most difficult of all specimens to obtain in their native state; that is, found in nature uncombined with any other element.