TV Picture

[Chipmunk]

Hey, this may seem like an odd question but what's it called when I TV shows the white and black interlocking dots on your television, you know when you click on a channel wheres theres nothing there. It's for a intro i'm making.

Failing that, what's it called with the circles and the counting down numbers you see on old films.

Thanks,
Ben

[unclep4ul]

Static or Snow

[RC-1290]

If you want to know how to make static: it can be achieved in Photoshop with filter> noise > add noise.

[Athlete{UK}]

some interesting ness ness about the snow you see on the tv on these channles (and also the white noise on radios in between stations.

What creates this is the background radiation present throughout the universe. The TV/Radio is picking this up on a huge range of frequencies. They are random however and the signals produce these random fuzzy images.

The radiation is left over from the big bang so what you're actually watching/listening to is the beginning of the universe. Which brings up a curious metaphysical question of why it is more fun to watch Dr Who then the creation of everything that has ever existed or will ever exist.

[Penney]

some interesting ness ness about the snow you see on the tv on these channles (and also the white noise on radios in between stations.

What creates this is the background radiation present throughout the universe. The TV/Radio is picking this up on a huge range of frequencies. They are random however and the signals produce these random fuzzy images.

The radiation is left over from the big bang so what you're actually watching/listening to is the beginning of the universe. Which brings up a curious metaphysical question of why it is more fun to watch Dr Who then the creation of everything that has ever existed or will ever exist.

And thats my dailey dose of Athlete for the day!

[zombie@computer]

well, if you want more:

Most cosmic rays originate from extrasolar sources within our own galaxy such as rotating neutron stars, supernovae, and black holes. However, the fact that some cosmic rays have extremely high energies provides evidence that at least some must be of extra-galactic origin (e.g. radio galaxies and quasars); the local galactic magnetic field would not be able to contain particles with such a high energy. The origin of cosmic rays with energies up to 1014 eV can be accounted for in terms of shock-wave acceleration in supernova shells. The origin of cosmic rays with energy greater than 1014 eV remained unknown until recently, when a large collaborative experiment at the Pierre Auger Observatory appears to have answered this question. In preliminary results announced in November, 2007 they showed a strong correlation between their 27 most energetic events and active galactic nuclei [AGN]. These results demonstrated that there is only a small chance (less than 1/100) that the highest energy protons originated from outside the AGN.

Cosmic radiation is only 15% of radiation on the planet's surface, there's a lot more coming from the earth's crust, radon (naturally existing, radioactive gas) and emissions of burning fossil fuels. Most europeans will still see a tiny bit of Chernobyl on their tv's aswell

[Rocket_Robinhood]

thats actually really interestign zombie and athelete, i didnt knwo that

[Mr. Happy]

I call em ants

[Psy]

Interesting shizzle. Science ftw!

[vcool]

Well the reason why we can hear the noise and see that static is because those particles (mostly photons...lets just say, energy particles to make things easier) have a very high wavelength, which is something more than 1 meter. Anything more that 1 meter is a radio-ave. (although it may overlap with infrared, but I don't remember the electromagnetic spectrum off the top of my head )

It's quite awesome how you can pretty much hear the echo of the explosion that occurred about 20 billion years ago...

[1447]

Damn you people, now I actually find the static images on my TV interesting...