Summer is fading into a memory now, but as surely as the earth orbits the sun, those hot and sweaty days will return soon enough. And what can you do about it at the level of a single, suffering human being? After all, a person can only remove so much clothing to help cool off. Until someone figures out a way to make those stillsuits from Dune, we need an interim solution in which to drape ourselves.

We’ve seen the whitest paint possible for cooling buildings, and then we saw a newer, whiter and more award-winning paint a few months later. This paint works by the principle of passive cooling. Because of its color and composition, it reflects most light and absorbs some heat, which gets radiated away into the mid-infrared spectrum. It does this by slipping out Earth’s atmospheric window and into space. Now, a team based in China have applied the passive cooling principle to fabric. Continue reading “How Much Is That Shirt In The (Atmospheric) Window?” →