
L.A. is coating its streets with material that hides planes from spy satellites - rayascott
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/08/18/why-l-a-is-coating-its-streets-with-material-that-hides-planes-from-spy-satellites
======
politician
This title has zero to do with the article.

TLDR: LA suffers from "heat island" effect, so to lower the temperature at the
street level they're coating streets with a sealant. The company that
manufactures the sealant previously developed sealants for the military.

~~~
JoblessWonder
Agreed. Bad click-baity title.

Before I clicked on the article I was trying to figure out how coating a
city's streets would somehow prevent spy planes from being seen. I didn't even
want to try and crack why this might be necessary.

------
codewritinfool
“We found that on average the area covered in CoolSeal is 10 degrees cooler
than black asphalt on the same parking lot,” Spotts said. “We thought it was
really interesting. It’s almost like treated asphalt warms at a lower rate.”

Um, yes.

------
jacquesm
Anything that increases the albedo of a surface will make it cooler than it
was before.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo)

It's a pity that glass mirrors make for a crappy road surface otherwise they
might try that :)

------
dawnerd
That title was pretty confusing. Thought that LA was trying to hide planes...

~~~
castis
Same. Using 'with the same material' would have made that way more clear IMO.

------
joelrunyon
Anyone have a non-WAPO link?

They're becoming the new forbes.

~~~
spking
[https://outline.com/ABn5nn](https://outline.com/ABn5nn)

~~~
Overtonwindow
WOW, you have made my day. Thank you!!!!

------
smileysteve
Per some of the comments, why not just add white pigment or more concrete
based streets.

------
overcast
That is some next level click bait titling right there.

