The world’s quietest place: You can hear your own heartbeat – and even your blood flow!

The anechoic chamber in the Minneapolis laboratory is so quiet that even your most subtle bodily functions become perceptible.

For most people, silence is calming. But imagine a place where the silence is so absolute that you can hear your own heart beating, your blood flowing, and some even claim, the creaking of their bones. This is not fiction, but a reality at Orfield Laboratories’ anechoic test chamber in Minneapolis, which holds the Guinness World Record for the quietest place on Earth.

Minus 24.9 Decibels – A New Dimension of Silence

The background noise level in the room is minus 24.9 decibels, far below the quietest sound perceptible to the human ear (zero decibels) or the 30 decibels of an average whisper. This astonishing silence is achieved thanks to fibreglass wedges covering the walls and ceiling, which absorb all sound.

According to Steve J. Orfield, one of the chamber’s designers, the extreme sound insulation leads to an unusually sharp perception of one’s own body for those inside. While this might seem like a unique experience at first, the total silence does not have a meditative effect on people. On the contrary, after a while, it can cause uncomfortable tinnitus, dizziness, and loss of balance. It’s no coincidence that the longest time anyone has endured in the room continuously was only half an hour.

More Than a Unique Experience: A Hub for Scientific Research

Like most anechoic chambers, the Orfield Laboratories facility is primarily used for testing audio equipment and other electronic devices, such as microphones, headphones, loudspeakers, and hearing aids. Orfield hopes that in the future, they can also work on studies here that could impact the lives of people with autism, dementia, and PTSD, as sound perception can be crucial in managing and understanding these conditions.

This remarkable place is both a scientific milestone and an experience that highlights the limits of human perception and how even silence has depths we are not prepared for.

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