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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

No offense, but did you read the article? It's directly addressed:

> So Raman and electrical engineering professor Shanhui Fan made panels containing layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium oxide on top of a thin layer of silver. These radiate in a unique way: They send heat directly into space, bypassing the Earth’s atmosphere. The panels do this by emitting heat at infrared wavelengths between 8 and 13 micrometers. To these waves, the Earth’s atmosphere is transparent. What’s more, the panels reflect nearly all the sunlight falling on them.

A little further research shows that the atmosphere is opaque at numerous wavelengths and it's probably safe to assume that they intentionally targeted the opaque ones: https://i.imgur.com/eUmTltm.png

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agreed, except that in the last sentence you mean "transparent" not "opaque" (the atmosphere must be relatively transparent at a particular wavelength to allow radiant energy to escape to space at that wavelength).

While i understand you both.

A title is a title. And the title claims 'heat' not reflecting infrared wavelengths between 8 and 13 micrometers. And imho 'heat' is more then certain ranges of infrared wavelengths. So in that sense i can see why somebody uses the word clickbait in regards to this title.

edit joke While i'm just afraid the moon will start to condensate /edit

It's removing heat from a system by radiating it into space. That it's radiated using infrared is irrelevant, since it does cool the system it is attached to. Even "beam" is appropriate in this instance. There's no "bait" in the "click-bait", it's exactly as advertised.

Listen, a little tl;dr is not too much to ask for around here, especially when the salient point is buried 7 paragraphs in, when it should be present in the leading sentence. Forgive me for not locating the relevant passage, while quickly skimming this and 100 other articles, while at work.

Furthermore, regarding cloud cover, I am dubious of the premise that even the specified wavelengths penetrate otherwise opaque cloud cover. Sure, maybe that portion of the spectrum penetrates the typical atmospheric mix, including light water vapor, on an otherwise clear day, but, color me unsurprised if it fails to penetrate smog, diesel and particulate pollution, and other common dust constituents in cloud nuclei. I mean, even radar can be blinded by dense storm clouds.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's a 100% miracle cure. Maybe it's that awesome. I hope I really am just a big dummy, too lazy to read a blurb more than three sentences long.

> Listen, a little tl;dr is not too much to ask for around here

Then ask for a summary, or point out that it's not well written for easy dissemination of facts.. There's no need to call a title out as click bait when it isn't. There's plenty of click-bait titles to go around, we don't need to malign accurate titles without cause. A click-bait title isn't just wrong or unclear, it's purpose is to intentionally mislead people for views. An accusation of click-bait is similar to an accusation of lying, which is different than being unclear or incorrect. As such it should be reserved for cases where there's evidence to back it up, otherwise discourse breaks down, in the same way accusing someone of lying when they are unclear (or you are unclear on their meaning) doesn't lead to useful discussion.

You have questions regarding the veracity of the statement? Sure, figure that out, and then make a statement about how accurate it is. If you aren't part of the signal, you're part of the noise.

apparently you don't really know what clickbait is, though i do know what you mean, and i think thats correct, though not more correct then to say the title has a clickbait factor.

And if you think this title wasn't thought of to maximise clickthroughs (again, regardless of the content of the article as clickbait ONLY applies to the title) ... you are very naive..

Other titles could be, getting rid of excess heat via infrared into space. Which would be less interesting to majority of people, as people read it, and think 'oh airconditioning, i got that... oh a new unit that beams into space ... neato...'

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