Comment Re:We care why? (Score 4, Insightful) 50
The problem with assuming that, is that it implies that the limits we have on engineering with real, actual materials will also be the same all across the universe. No dilithium, no unobtainium, no red matter, no warp drives, no magical materials.
The ridiculousness of some of the fictional materials you mention aside, it's looking more and more as if the majority of the mass of the universe is made up of non-baryonic matter that we can't identify. There also may be stable super-heavy elements we might discover some day, as well as non-standard arrangements of baryons that might also be stable. Maybe we'll also be able to make hybrid forms of baryonic/non-baryonic matter or novel arrangements of all sorts of other particle types. Then there's an entire theoretical periodic table of antimatter as well. We've only gotten as far as making anti-helium so far.
So, there are a lot of potential "real, actual" materials we may be able to play with some day, not to mention all kinds of chemical and nuclear tricks we still may have to learn with the materials we already have.
Once, the alchemists were crazy to think that elements could be transmuted. Then we learned more about the nature of matter and about atoms and chemical and nuclear bonds and it became even more obvious that the alchemists were crazy. Then we figured out that you actually can transmute elements. Your attitude that, essentially, everything has been discovered is just as bad as the attitude that anything is possible.