Dilithium

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This article is about a fictitious substance. There is also a rock formation in Owens River Gorge in California called "The Dilithium Crystal".

Dilithium is a fictional crystalline mineral in the universe of Star Trek. A beam of matter and antimatter interacting within dilithium generates a plasma that is used to power the warp drives that allow starships to travel faster than light. This function of dilithium was officially established with the Star Trek: The Next Generation series; in earlier works its properties are not clearly defined.

In the original series, dilithium crystals occurred only naturally, making the search for them a major plot element for a number of stories. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Spock discovers a method of re-crystallizing dilithium that allows the crew to regenerate the crystals on board their Klingon Bird-of-prey. This involves using 20th century fission reactors that generate high-energy photons that could cause the crystals to regenerate. Presumably this technique was not used earlier in the series because fission reactors had long been replaced by cleaner and more efficient technology.

To avoid plots based on searches for dilithium crystals, the back-story of The Next Generation has dilithium synthesized artificially. These crystals can also be re-crystallized using technology that had been developed during the time between the original series movies and the events of The Next Generation.

It is established that a large amount of dilithium can cause a planet to become geologically unstable, leading to a number of planets that had broken apart. The crew of the Enterprise-D find a method of eliminating the dilithium from such planets in order to save them.

Neither dilithium, trilithium, nor paralithium exist in the real world, but they are suggestive of an as yet undiscovered form of the real-world element lithium. According to molecular orbital theory, dilithium is plausible in the real world, having a bond order of 1. In fact, lithium is believed to exist in the gas phase as an Li₂ molecule. However, with more than two lithium atoms, the bonding is more likely to be metallic than covalent.

The props used in place of dilithium crystals appear to be rose quartz in some instances and calcite in others.

In the computer game NetHack, dilithium crystals are the most valuable gemstone you can find. They are white, and are as soft as worthless glass.

In the science-fiction comedy satire Tripping the Rift, the Jupiter 42 also runs on dilithium.

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