Who needs cable?

Do you know what cosmic background radiation is? If you don't, don't worry, because I'm about to tell you.

Basically, when astronomers look at a part of the sky that appears to be empty, even after they take the effects of interstellar matter and interplanetary dust and scattering and so on into account, there is still radiation coming towards Earth from that point. It's there throughout the spectrum - infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, etc - but the most famous component of it is found in the microwave region. What you find there is actually photons that are left over from the Big Bang - the billions of years and bajillions of miles that these photons have crossed to get to our planet have redshifted them into microwaves. It was the discovery of this radiation (the accidental discovery, by the way, which is an interesting story in itself) that helped to turn Big Bang Theory itself from an intriguing notion into a commonly accepted "fact." (Among scientists, anyway, and if you want to talk religion go see Hank.)

"Great, Todd," you're saying now, "thanks for the science lesson. But what does that have to do with me?" Well, I'll tell you that too. Turn your TV on. Fiddle with it (change the channel, shut off your cable/satellite, whatever) until you're on a channel full of snow. Go ahead and make the obligatory Poltergeist joke, get it out of your system. Now, look at that snow. About 1% of that interference is caused by this very same cosmic background radiation.

So next time you're bitching about how there's nothing on TV, remember that you can always just change the channel and watch the birth of the universe.