Just static?

Do you remember the static on analogue TVs?  If you live in the U.S. the analogue signals are not broadcast anymore, and what it means is that our old friend, the TV static, is gone.  Well, why should we care you ask?  Just for childhood memories?  What were you calling those when you were a kid? Did you compare them with snow flakes like most kids do?  Well, I for one have a good memory of my brother pulling my leg about it once.

One day after school he ran to my room, excited and happy.  "Have you heard about the new cartoon?", he asked.  "No, what cartoon?".  Now, let's get some perspective,as it is always good.  At that time we were living in Iran.  It was during war years.  We had only two public channels, each having programs for children one hour a day only.  Not all their cartoons were brand new either.  Some we had watched several times.  Anyways,  he told me how it was a foreign made brand new cartoon, maybe European or American.  It was fictional too!  It was about colony of aunts trying to survive a hard winter.  It always snowed where they lived, and yet ants, the hardworking organized creatures they are, they always survived.  It was about their stories and struggles, and if it was not exciting enough, that show was on all the time whenever there was no other program.  That was like a dream show!  You can imagine my face when we turned on the TV after running downstairs impatiently for me to see this brand new cartoon.  That was my most exciting experience with TV static.

Now, I have learned it was something even more exciting!  Not just because of our imagination and story telling talents in absence of enough entertainment, but for our own amazing universe and how it was born.  Did you know that every time you watch static on TV, you are also observing parts of the Big Bang?  The microwave radiations it had sent us billions of years ago, which have just reached us?  Is not that amazing?  Do not you miss watching Big Bang on your own TV?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjLtdorH0iE

The child in me is happy to get back at my brother with a better story.