Tag: world’s

Ever have that moment after you’ve woken up in the middle of the night, where you try to lay back down for a peaceful nights sleep but start to hear all the little sounds of the room come to life? So much so that it gets to the point where the silence of the room is just too loud and you have to turn on a fan, or maybe the tv? Well, what if I told you there is a room so intensely quiet you can hear your own inner organs moving and pulsating? A room where the movement of your own ears and eyeballs are so loud its deafening?A place where you’ll even begin to hallucinate after just 30 minutes alone? Seems pretty creepy right?

It sounds like a some kind of weird torture room in a futuristic horror movie set on a spaceship, but it’s actually just a room that is able to completely eliminate background noise to allow researchers to test and accurately measure the true amount of sound electronic devices give off, used by film makers to record voice overs, and even used for vocals and musical instrumentation on songs. Just don’t go in alone…’cause then it gets weird.

Oddity Central writes:

The mad and hectic pace of life, sometimes makes us all crave some peace and quiet. But then, as they say, too much of a good thing can actually be bad for you. That applies to silence, as it turns out people can’t stand to be in the world’s quietest place for too long. The longest a person has lasted in there is 45 minutes.

The place I’m talking about is a room at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis. The room, also known as the ‘anechoic chamber’, is 99.99% sound absorbent. The double-insulated walls are made of steel and foot-thick concrete. Along the walls are also 3.3-foot thick fiberglass acoustic wedges that contribute to the ultra-quietness. The room holds the current Guinness World Record for being the quietest place on Earth. While it does seem like a dream come true, especially for those who live with kids or have stressful jobs, it’s actually not all that great. The room gets so silent that you can actually hear your internal organs at work. And after a while, the hallucinations begin.

The founder and president of Orfield Labs, Steven Orfield says that people are challenged to sit in the chamber with all the lights out. There was this one reporter who managed to stay in there for 45 minutes. Mr. Orfield himself can do it for 30 minutes, in spite of his mechanical heart valve that becomes very loud inside the room. “When it’s quiet, ears will adapt,” he says. “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.”

Read more at odditycentral.com/news