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In your area/country, did you have a word or phrase to describe the static white noise on a television set not tuned to a channel? (upload.wikimedia.org)

submitted 9 months ago by Rentlar@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Bonus points if there's a known onomatopoeia to describe the sound.

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[–] JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What caused this? Shit used to terrify me as a kid

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

Essentially the TV just plays whatever data is there on that frequency band. When there is nothing on the channel, it picks up background radiation from space; cosmic gamma rays that just happened to have lengthened to the wavelengths that the TV happens to be playing on.