I’ve just downloaded the Architecture of Radio app (£2.99) and was instantly entranced by the lovely background whooshing sounds it makes (wearing headphones made me feel like I was on the Starship Enterprise).
It converts the data about cell towers and communication satellites that are nearby (based on your location) and shows you a mapped visualisation, along with sonic accompaniment – it’s lovely, though it looks like it’s a heavy user of battery power.
I wondered if the signal would increase when I waved it in front of my broadband router (no, though some coloured darts whooshed past regularly) but possibly it couldn’t have done taht, given that the data isn’t coming ‘live’ from what’s around me straight to my phone, but data gathered ‘live’ and reported elsewhere first and then picked up by the app and represented on my phone – it is a “theoretical simulation rather than a full measurement of the entire radio spectrum” according to the app’s creator, Richard Vijgen [Gizmodo article].
Screenshot of Architecture of Radio app in action on an iPhone
I can’t share video yet because I don’t know how to edit it so that my location (which floats on the screen) is redacted, which is easy enough on a photograph (see above), but here are some sound recordings taken by holding my phone over the speaker on my laptop and using QuckTime Player (File > New Audio Recording)
This one (above) is quieter than the one below but still be careful with headphones.
The one is louder (upped the volume on the phone, so be careful with headphones) and you can hear clicks as well as whooshes.
The app represents the ‘infosphere’, with data relating to radio signals for communication, observation and navigation – not the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Image credit: By Inductiveload, NASA – self-made, information by NASABased off of File:EM Spectrum3-new.jpg by NASAThe butterfly icon is from the P icon set, File:P biology.svgThe humans are from the Pioneer plaque, File:Human.svg The buildings are the Petronas towers and the Empire State Buildings, both from File:Skyscrapercompare.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
We are continuously bathed in electromagnetic radiation from different sources as we move through the world. The Sun is pinging out LOTS, though it might feel a bit less like it in a cold February, sending us stuff we can sense ourselves directly (visible light, heat) as well as stuff we can’t (eg UV, though we can be aware of its effects after the fact if we get sunburned).
We also get radio waves from communications satellites in orbit, and from communications towers here on Earth, plus wifi, 3G, 4G etc. Some people are a bit fearful about this (perhaps because the word ‘radiation’ can refer to harmful ionising radiation such as used in X-rays as well as non-ionising radiation which isn’t harmful) and there are plenty of dodgy companies waiting to sell you something which they claim will ‘shield’ you from this radiation. Don’t waste your money.
Sound stuff 
