One my biggest disappointments with Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" was its failure to include Tom Bombadil, the immortal woodsman who is immune to the One Ring.
The character has a small but intriguing part in J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy, but of course there's no room for him in a blockbuster film. Not so, however, with this very cool Periodic Table of Middle Earth, which replaces elements with earthly characters from LOTR and "The Hobbit."
Bombadil has a place of pride in this Tolkien table, and sits opposite Frodo, who has replaced hydrogen in the periodic table from our world.
The characters are arranged according to race, even those like Bombadil who don't fit in anywhere. Each has his or her own symbol and number, as well as birth and death dates. Wearers of the One Ring, such as Isildur and Gollum (who is classified as a Hobbit), get a special circle.
Aragorn, for instance, is part of the Men group, and has the symbol Ar (fittingly, the same as the noble gas argon) and the atomic number 33. Sauron is at the bottom right, in black, with the symbol S and the number 114.
Creator and superfan Emil Johansson is a Swedish chemical engineering student behind the fan site Lotr Project, which features an elaborate genealogy of Middle Earth. Johansson has spoken at TEDxGöteborg and introduced his calculations regarding Hobbit life expectancy (96.24 years, plus or minus 2.7 years).
Naturally, fans of LOTR have pointed out a few inconsistencies with the periodic table, and argued for changes such as classifying the Ainur spirits as noble gases.
Johansson has been defending his decisions and is selling poster-sized versions of the Periodic Table of Middle Earth for $15.
(Via io9)