The static on old CRT TVs with rabbit ears was the cosmic microwave background. No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
People born before 2000 think older technology just evaporated the minute the millenium ticked over.
Like when the black and white world suddenly got colorized! My grandpap told me about them old days - when the lawn, the sidewalk and the sky were just different shades of gray.
You mean scrambled porn, right?
2001 here literally grew up with CRT static, you have your years a bit off there.
I was about to say, i think we had a CRT till about 2010. My grandma still has one upstairs so even my youngest cousins still grew up with it.
They haven’t?
I have a TV from ~2010 that still gives me static when something isn’t connected.
The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel…
It really isn’t though. It is thermal noise.
Random radio sources, but a small part of the signal is CMB. I wasn’t sure what you even meant by thermal noise but I believe it’s a phenomenon of flatscreens. I found something that said it was “similar to snow on analog TVs” - so apparently there’s a difference.
Funnily, Google AI says, “In the 1940s, people could detect the CMB at home by tuning their TVs to channel 03 and measuring the remaining static after removing other sources. This allowed them to prove the Big Bang before scientists did.” So they had that going for 'em, which is nice.
“Thermal Noise” is a phenomenon where everything makes EM noise, just from thermal energy.
If you were to put such a TV in a faraday cage, with an RF termination, you would see something similar. Because noise is inherently part of the circuitry and amplifiers.
Could it not be both?
Last time I thought about static I wondered why colour TV didn’t show colour static.
Turns out the colour signal was on very specific frequencies, and if it wasn’t present, it would assume it was a black and white signal and turn off the colour circuit.
Well, if they had watched any HBO show, they kind of saw it !
I still see it sometimes when connecting my Steam Deck to my TV
If they watch Poltergeist they’ll know it’s the TV people trying to get out.
uhhh, yes i have? I’m pretty sure some of my younger cousins have lol
Say that to my three CRTs. I was born in 2003.
Dude Flatscreen HDTVs were expensive even in 2008, and cable actually got worse for higher price so most people were hooked into local broadcast.
Cosmic microwave? Is that what you are calling “ants in a snowstorm” these days?
Salt and pepper fighting.
“War of the Ants”, where I’m from (sweden).
Ask your friend which side is winning, say you’re rooting for the black ants, then turn off the TV and claim victory.
ok Sweden wins this one
Ant races
Tube TV’s remained in common service well into the 2010’s. The changeover from analog to fully digital TV transmission did not happen until 2009, with many delays in between, and the government ultimately had to give away digital-to-analog tuner boxes because so many people still refused to let go of their old CRT’s.
Millions of analog TV’s are still languishing in basements and attics in perfect working order to this very day, still able to show you the cosmic background, if only anyone would dust them off or plug them in. Or in many retro gaming nerds’ setups. I have one, and it’ll show me static any time I ask. (I used it to make this gif, for instance.)
In fact, with no one transmitting analog television anymore (probably with some very low scale hobbyist exceptions), the cosmic background radiation is all they can show you now if you’re not inputting video from some other device. Or unless you have one of those dopey models that detects a no-signal situation and shows a blue screen instead. Those are lame.
Amateur radio operators are indeed allowed to transmit analog NTSC television in the UHF band. It’s most commonly done on the 70cm (440MHz) band, and a normal everyday 90’s television is all you need to receive the signals. You’d tune to what would have been cable channels 57 through 61. The use cases for this have decreased in recent years; for example you used to see hams using amateur television to send video signals from RC aircraft or model rockets, now that’s done with compressed digital video over something like Wi-Fi and doesn’t require a license. But, it’s still legal for hams to do.
I think my mom still uses the last CRT TV that I had. Gave it to her when I bought my first 720p HD TV, as the old CRT was better than her old TV. Later on I also gave her that HD TV but she still has the CRT too.
