Here in Arizona they came up with a novel solution to dealing with the glut of old tires in landfills and the fact that many of our residential areas abut major freeways and streets and the noise from traffic on those surfaces is often deafening.

They found that a mixture of ground up tires and asphalt laid down atop the normal asphalt had a huge sound deadening effect. All our major freeways and many surface streets were soon covered with this very black thin layer and the results were stunning. If you were driving along on a standard road surface and hit one of these new spots it was as if you dropped 30 mph off your speed. Everything got quiet.

Well, some group was doing some aerial infrared photography work over the valley looking for thermal hot spots. I don't even remember what the purpose was but they found something shocking. Where this material had been applied, despite the fact that the layer was considerably darker than the underlying pavement, there was a substantial drop in the heat retention. Those surfaces were actually cooler than the ground surrounding them.

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