Everybody loves Wi-Fi. Fast why fy, free wee fee, everywhere wireless. But what if we could actually see the Wi-Fi signals we use everyday? What if they covered the world in an electric smoggy haze? Would you still love it? Ah what the hell, probably hell yes.
Artist Nickolay Lamm from MyDeals.com (and friend of Gizmodo) worked with M. Browning Vogel, who has a Ph.D. in Astrobiology and is a former NASA employee to imagine a world where Wi-Fi signals were visible. It’s a visual mind trip, to say the least.
For an in-depth look at how Wi-Fi works and affects the world around it, go here. [Nickolay Lamm MyDeals]
A view of trees obstructing Wi-Fi signals.
This image shows how Wi-Fi waves decrease in amplitude as its further from the source (larger on the right where the source is and smaller on the left). According to Lamm and Vogel the picture “shows an idealised wifi data transmitted over a band that is divided into different sub-channels, which are shown in red, yellow, green and other colours.”
Routers and computers will send and receive data as waves that are 3 to 5 inches apart from each other. Lamm and Vogel say, “the wifi pulses are shown here as multicolored spheres radiating out from the source, near the right of the image.” A ‘normal’ field of Wi-Fi is typically spherical and can extend 65 to 100 feet.
