Iridium

Apparent useless facts can actually be rather practical whilst some seemingly iconic ‘facts’ are mere mirages, propped up by 101 assumptions, which turn out to be no less mythical than 101 Dalmatians being hunted by Cruella Deville.   It is a rather dull fact of science that the melting point of the element iridium is 2446 degrees Centigrade, or 4435 degrees Fahrenheit (far hotter than Fahrenheit 451, at which many books would have incinerated, but at 4435, there would be enough heat to turn your favorite novel into plasma).  Nonetheless, while this fact is dull, it becomes rather pragmatic when knowing this allowed engineers needed to find just the right element with sufficiently high melting point to use on the tips of spark plugs in automobile engines – only iridium would do, at least practically.  Conversely, some ‘facts’ should rather be put on the shelf of speculations.  One such is not the rather relatively dense layer of iridium near the Yucatan Peninsula on the gulf coast of Mexico.  Another such is not that there is relatively little iridium in terrestrial minerals, but a relatively high amount in asteroids and meteoroids.  Both of these are facts, indeed.  But one such ‘fact’ that is not directly observable is that the high level of iridium at the Yucatan Peninsula was from an asteroid impact 66 million years ago and subsequently led to the demise of dinosaurs.  Dear friends, this is called interpretation, not fact.  But what do I know, our legislators seem to think that the fact of chromosomes and genitalia do not determine bathroom usage policy, but the interpretation of that data is necessary, with room for error.