It just occurred that along with platinum it should be important in the AI industry.
I pay a hundred slaves in an impoverished country, to stomp on it with their bare feet until the ore is small enough to fit in the grinders. If one of them falls into the grinder, well, that is to be expected.
I sell it for EV batteries so people can feel good in their Tesla.
Since it’s about twice as dense as lead and nearly three times as dense as steel, it would be great for making Mjölnir hammers.
Reminds me of the Superman comic where he compressed the world’s coal into diamonds in his bare hands only to find out afterwards that now coal was worth more than diamonds.
I have a really nice cylinder of tungsten that I appreciate due to its density, as it makes other elements feel like cheap plastic. But iridium is at another level, and I’d quite like to add it to my elemental metal collection. I’m not sure what to do with the other 69,999,998 kg, though.
I’d make kg standards with it and distribute them to all the schools in the world.
Well I wouldn’t exactly call it “at another level”. Tungsten is 19.3 g/cc and iridium is 22.5 g/cc. A cube of tungsten weighing 1 kg would be 37 mm on a side, while a kilogram cube of iridium would 35 mm on a side. It wouldn’t be easy to even see the difference.
Well, the volumetric difference wouldn’t be too easy to spot due to the x3 scaling, but the density difference is over 15%. All the samples in my (very modest) collection are 50x50 mm cylinders, and I can pretty easily tell the weight difference between iron and copper, which is less than the difference here. At any rate, iridium and osmium are virtually tied for the (uncompressed) density record. Tungsten and gold are a ways behind at <20 g/cc.
Imperidium.
All hail the Imperidium Rex!
High hardness and high temperature stability suggest it might have use in bearings used in extreme temperature applications. Rocket turbopumps, aircraft engines, etc.
As was said, 70K tons is not a large quantity on a global scale, so even if the raw material was nearly free, it’s only going to be usable in very small doses lest we run out tomorrow before we even start scaling up the industrial processes that would use it. Which suggests only exotic specialty applications, not as e.g. an optical coating for building windows.
The chemical catalyst idea has a lot of merit since catalysts are, by definition, reusable. Net of some practical difficulties of course.
Make a huge number of high vacuum indium gaskets, so the universe will never go short again.
With what’s left, make lots of indium solder.
Add it to the formula for hull metal, making our spaceships a lot stronger.
Strong enough to keep @Qadgop_the_Mercotan out?
Iridium, not indium.
Also not illudium.
Iridium gives me wicked gas.
Yes. The difference in density between small objects made of iron vs. copper in instantly evident in the hand. So, a small difference in numbers is subjectively pretty solid (heh).
In my experience, optical coatings require only a very small amount of material.
Only a small amount of material for a high-end scientific instrument, say. But building windows are a lot of surface area. You might have enough to coat the windows of the headquarters building of Irridium, Inc., but you’re not going to have enough to make it a standard for new construction.
It boils at 7500° F so wicked gas indeed.
Iridium is a fantastic engineering material. It’s not used for much because of its high price. Likewise gold and platinum, though not for all the same exact reasons.
I can imagine, for instance, the measuring faces of machine shop measurement tools would all become iridium. Tweezers might wind up with iridium points. Iridium scalpel blades might become the new standard. It’d probably find lots of uses in laboratories.
Not to be a buzzkill, but if you have that big chunk of iridium out in space, getting it down to the surface of our home planet without damaging the iridium or the planet much would be quite a challenge. I guess that has to come out of the payback.