Sunday, 11 December 2011

Old TV Signals NOT Bouncing Back To Earth


A 2009 April Fools joke by the BBC is doing the rounds again on Farcebook and Twitter, as fact!

The story is a BBC team have been working closely with a team of astronomers to help recover old TV signals, bounced back to earth. They claim they have recovered about 7 weeks of 47 year old television signals from space, and every day in their lab is like traveling back in time. They have just started the digital recovery of signals that contain lost Doctor Who episodes.

source

This is of course rubbish, its an old April Fool, and it has already been proven that old radio signals in space degrade, so although they technically go on forever, they get more and more unreadable, so even if the technology becomes available to receive old radio signals, it is unlikely we will get old TV and radio shows back this way :(

7 comments :

Thomas Estes said...

I read that, got all excited, saw the date, got sad then realized that it wasn't very funny (not that the person being laughed at ever thinks the joke is), so I then thought about the coolness vs. likelihood I'm this lucky index and figured I should google it.

com bom said...

i remember it from 2009, when i leaned about radio waves degrading :0

pcjonathan said...

Really? Only 2009? I would have thought it was common sense. After all...people get hopeless signal here on Earth...need I say more? (and I could...say much more)

Jamie Arnett said...

oh :/  i was all impressed.

James Enelow said...

 But that isn't even funny except for Jocks who like treating people like S$*& why would they do that?  I mean, it's so distinctively well written, and i think they shouldn't do stuff like that. I'm serious. some things should be sacred to the BBC and Doctor Who should be one of them.  This isn't even funny on any scale.

I'm Coming! said...

I rubbed one out over the excitement I experienced reading that article. But now I want it back.

Scott Henderson said...

true signals degrade over distance how ever they can be amplified and bounce back from closer objects however this is probably an april fools joke from a long time ago, but when the bbc releases those "lost" episodes what will you think then?