Eleventh Hour: Nanofilms

A small part of me despaired after last night's Eleventh Hour: A virus passed by skin-to-skin contact caused a self-generating nanofilm of metal to spread all over the skin, which then made everyone with the disease susceptible to lightning strikes. In the immortal word of Bill Cosby: Right. But start reading enough about nanofilm, and anyone would discover there's actually some real science out there that can justify parts of this plot. Think of the episode as a kind of pointillist canvas, with each dot of discovery forming the big picture of a Sci Fi plot device. Nanofilms are, in general, a totally pedestrian concept. Put simply, it's a layer of material that coats something else, only since it's a nano-something, the coating will only be a molecule or two thick, at the most. Severalcommercialcompanies make nanofilms that make glasses, computer monitors, or optical lenses resistant to fog and finger ...