Earth’s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes

[microrobert]

We all crave it, but can you stand the silence? The longest anyone can bear Earth's quietest place is 45 minutes

They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time.

The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes.

It’s 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s quietest place, but stay there too long and you may start hallucinating.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/04/03/article-2124581-1274105D000005DC-638_634x421.jpg

Earth's quietest place: The 'anechoic chamber' at Orfield Laboratories, which is 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and capable of giving you hallucinations


Read more: The world's quietest place is a chamber at Orfield Laboratories | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2124581/The-worlds-quietest-place-chamber-Orfield-Laboratories.html#ixzz1rHKQdmEo)

[Baron Samedi]

This is so awesome. I want to go there.

[microrobert]

Earth’s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/12/earths-quietest-place-will-drive-you-crazy-in-45-minutes/)

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/files/2013/12/4933269629_5718f728a1_z.jpg (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/files/2013/12/4933269629_5718f728a1_z.jpg)



Everybody seems to be looking for a little peace and quiet these days. But even such a reasonable idea can go too far. The quietest place on earth, an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories (http://www.orfieldlabs.com/researchtour4.html) in Minnesota, is so quiet that the longest anybody has been able to bear it is 45 minutes.

Inside the room it’s silent. So silent that the background noise measured is actually negative decibels, -9.4 dBA. Steven Orfield, the lab’s founder, told Hearing Aid Know (http://www.hearingaidknow.com/2013/12/12/quietest-room-anechoic-chamber/): “We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark – one person stayed in there for 45 minutes. When it’s quiet, ears will adapt.

The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”

But the room isn’t just for torturing people. Companies test their products in it to find out just how loud they are. And NASA has sent astronauts to help them adapt to the silence of space. For you and me, however, the room is a deeply disorienting place. Not only do people hear their heartbeat, they have trouble orienting themselves and even standing. “How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk. In the anechnoic chamber, you don’t have any cues,” Orfield told the Daily Mail. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2124581/The-worlds-quietest-place-chamber-Orfield-Laboratories.html) “You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you’re in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair.”

So the next time you wish for some quiet time, remember that it could also drive you crazy.

Earth?s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes | Smart News (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/12/earths-quietest-place-will-drive-you-crazy-in-45-minutes/#ixzz2nvkSafm0)

[dude]

That's a creepy looking room.

[Drawing-slim]

Yes, i always knew absolute silence can drive you insane.

[Szegedist]

I have been to a similar room before, it is interesting for sure.

[cally]

Would like to try it out :)

[BrunetteAnna]

looks like a place i would never wanted
to try stay in,even for 5 minutes! i like to be around with people,
i dont like the isolation:D

[Mason8]

I feel like I wouldn't have a problem with being in a super quiet environment, I think I'd be driven mad if I could only sit there in a super quiet environment. If I had something to focus my attention to (even if it was itself quiet, like a board game or a smart phone or table on silence) I would probably feel disconcerting but function reasonably. It seems like if I had to do nothing else but exist in this chamber, I'd probably have to try to put myself to sleep

[Furnace]

I've been in that kind of room before, but it was only like 4*5 meters, 20m^2, pretty cool stuff.

Usually they are used to test radio equipment, almost all radio waves get absorbed into those sponge 'spikes'.

[silver_surfer]

Someone needs to make a recording so we can hear how quiet it is. :rolleyes: