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Comment by a4isms | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of “anti-flash white,” developed for bombers during the early years of the cold war. The theory was that the specially formulated white paint would reflect enough of a nuclear explosion’s thermal energy to allow the aircraft to survive the explosion as the bomber departed the scene.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-flash_white

It was also used on interceptors like the Avro Arrow prototypes.

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This makes me wonder, does "anti-flash white" reflect more than polished mirror-like metal?

Maybe not more, but different wavelengths.

The Wikipedia page does say "The purpose of the colour was to reflect some of the thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion", as far as my experience goes polished metal can still get extremely hot.

wouldn't it just be different directions?

A mirror would reflect light directionally, but white paint would seem to be diffuse.

Or said in another way, seeing a laser in a mirror might cause retinal damage, but on a white wall you would just see a dot. (although probably a speckly coherent dot)

The felt sensation of temperature depends not only on the temperature but also on thermal conductivity. With a low conductivity you feel less of a temperature difference to your body temperature. Most stuff in your apartment should have the same temperature, go and touch some metal objects and ceramic tiles or so.

Indeed, a friend of mine who designs playgrounds told me that one of her constraints is for slides not to be oriented such that they heat up too much from the sun.

I swear when I was a kid the rules must have been different. Every metal slide was always hot enough to fry bacon.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spectral-reflectivity-of... apparently most polished metals tend to absorb quite a lot of light in higher frequencies (shorter wavelengths).

The E-6 Mercury is painted in anti flash white

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACAMO

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