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No. 463: Periodic Table: 41 Niobium

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Periodic Table: 41 Niobium

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Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/dinosaur/?comic=463

Strip by: David Morgan-Mar

T-Rex: T-Rex presents The Periodic Table:
T-Rex: 41 NIOBIUM
T-Rex: Originally discovered alloyed with tantalum and named columbium, but later called niobium due to confusion over its extraction. American metallurgists still call it columbium out of spite.
Utahraptor: Maybe it really IS called columbium...
Utahraptor: and they'll turn out to be right all along, like Alfred Wegener[1]!
T-Rex: Science does not work that way[2]!!!
T-Rex; Except for geology. Geology is where it's at.[3]

The author writes:

[1] Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift, which nobody believed at the time, but was later vindicated.

[2] Space sure doesn't.

[3] Oh yeah.