<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Tylium is a fictional light metal used in the production of hyperspace fuel on the series Battlestar Galactica. This light metal can only be found on airless worlds and asteroids. The Twelve Colonies didn't have any sources close to home so ships were designed for long-range mining and refining. After extracting the light metal from its source, it is refined using technology to further purify the sample. Rods are made from this ore to insert them directly into engine "cores."

No one really knows how tylium is formed, but scientists suggest that when airless moons and asteroids collide, the heat from that collision forms the ore. Many attempts to manufacture tylium artificially have failed, and the only way to get the ore is the long process of finding, extracting, and refining it. Every system with airless moons and asteroids has tylium; some can even be found in the nucleus of comets, but it's much harder to extract the ore from that source so the cost is prohibitive.