Yes, it ought to, the periodic table is locked up tight. We’ve got every element, man synthesized the last ones in the laboratory. Number 118, Oganesson, dense material that has a short half-life.
What the aliens would have is compounds we’ve never seen, alloys we’ve never known, new ways of atoms uniting that we don’t know about, maybe crystals with atoms put together in ways we’ve never seen. Or metal alloys specifically formed, maybe polymers that change shape and move, no one really knows.
Writers have used the word “element” because it looks easy and intriguing — One thing, not many, but it’s wrong. New materials, yes – New elements, no.
Until they unearth isotopes we have no access to, or resurrect elements that decay so rapidly we can hardly study them — But that’s still chemistry and physics as we know it, not magic.
The universe has laws. Even for extraterrestrial beings.
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