what exactly is tv static?
In: Physics
Basically what happens when you add up all the random radio wave frequency noise.
The electricity going through the power lines leaking out? That’s part.
Stuff accidentally coming off a proper radio signal? That’s part.
A radar system looking for nukes, but bouncing off a cloud? that’s part.
A thunderstorm over the ocean, a charged particle from the sun bouncing off the earth’s magnetic field, those are parts of it.
Your weather radar, the wifi, a microwave oven, the nerves of a pigeon on the antenna, the transmissions from the International Space Station, a pulsar 280 light years away in space, literally the radio echo of the big bang. All of that is a part, and there’s too many sources for me to list.
All that random incredible and totally boring radio signals add up to absolute nonsense, which you see when you see static.
Signal noise.
The tv signal is received and sent to the Tv’s internals as a voltages, but when there is no actual signal, only the noise in wire is being amplified and displayed by the screen.
You’re watching the remnants of the big bang. Heat from the big bang has red shifted so much that it has turned into radio waves and its being picked up by your TV
Old CRT television sets are essentially big glass vacuum tubes that produced an image by projecting a pencil thin beam of electrons onto a phosphorescent screen. Enormous voltages are required to project electrons fast enough to excite the phosphors, usually around 20k to 50k volts, most color CRT TVs have a step up transformer capable of generating 50kv and the static you hear is the charge leaking out, since most common insulators are not that good at containing that high of a voltage
There is noise of all kinds in the radio spectrum, from the Sun and other stars, from cosmic rays, from lighting, from the brushes on electric motors and generators, and even from people who rub cats and then touch cold-water pipes. In AM, it shows up as cracking and fizzing. In analogue television, it causes the spotty pattern above (though it is not always anywhere near as bad as that). In digital television, it can cause the signal to drop out for a moment, usually causing pixelation in the image, or complete silence in the soundtrack.
It was actually because of research into the causes of radio static that radio astronomy was discovered.
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