The unit is Fahrenheit here, that is 16°F ≈ 8.9°C. It‘s also mentioned towards the end of the article but just to give readers an idea what to expect. The difference is also compared to silk while other, more modern fabrics perform much better and close the gap to the new material to just over 2.3°C/4°F.<p>These are certainly impressive numbers!
I'm suspicious that perhaps silver nanowires might be a health risk? I believe finely-divided silver can be toxic, at least in some circumstances.<p>Also, it's a composite with a plastic material, and would probably resist all attempts to recycle it, resulting eventually in microplastics (contaminated with metallic silver).
This is how modern roofing stackups work. They have a radiant heat barrier (layer) usually made from a thin foil shield attached to the roofing plywood. The only catch is you need a vented barrier below the foil to remove the heat. This is usually in the form of battons that are vented out to a ridge vent.<p>For this fabric to work, the third layer is acting like a thermal insulator - making sure the silver layer does not transfer the heat to your body.
I wonder how it fares actually cooling the body. Does the fabric also block heat coming from the body wearing it?<p>Has anyone information on the fabric that was able to cool the body that Ars covered?
<a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/new-fabric-passively-cools-whatever-its-covering-including-you/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/new-fabric-passively...</a>
There have been a lot of such materials over the years, but for some strange reason, none of them ever gets commercialized. We could have been using them all over the place, on all surfaces that expose to sunlight, but they're nowhere to be found.
"impossibly thin" sounds a lot like "very fragile and therefore completely impractical for things that you want fabrics for".<p>Or maybe we now <i>want</i> to fill the world and coat our bodies in nanoscale plastic and silver dust?
Are we now just in the timeline where David Bowie's <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth</a> happens?