The quietest place in the world is located at Microsoft’s headquarters in Washington state (USA). No one can stay in there for more than an hour.
In 2015, Microsoft built the room that is now listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the quietest place on the planet.”
In this anechoic chamber, ultrasensitive tests performed the same year resulted in an average ambient noise reading of -20.35 dBA (A-weighted decibels – sound pressure level measurement) .
Few people can stand being in this room for so long – an hour at most, according to the New York Post.
After a few minutes, they began to hear their own heartbeats, then the sound of bones and blood.
The purpose of the soundproof chamber is not so that the people inside cannot hear anything. It will eliminate all outside noise and allow them to hear the endless sounds of their own bodies.
Only following death does the body become completely silent.
Environments that we consider very quiet are often greater than the threshold of human hearing, which is regarding 0 decibels. For example, a library reading room can go up to regarding 40 decibels.
When no sound from the outside world entered, the absolute silence would gradually turn into an unbearable ringing in the ears. This can throw people off balance because there is no reverberation in the room, impairing their spatial perception.
“When you turn around, you can even hear the movement. You can hear your breathing and find it quite loud,” said Hundraj Gopal, chief designer of the room at Microsoft.
The word anechoic means “no echo”. It took two years to design the space.
Made up of 6 layers of concrete and steel, it is quite separate from the surrounding building. An array of vibration damping springs is located below. Inside, fiberglass wedges are mounted on the floor, ceiling and walls to disrupt sound waves before they have a chance to bounce back into the room.
Meanwhile, another soundproof room is hoping to take the title of the quietest room in the world.
Located at Orfield Labs in Minneapolis, the room achieves a “legitimate measurement” of “-24.9 dBA,” according to Steven J. Orfield, who designed the space. Before that, it held the record.
Orfield told the New York Times that he has filed a claim for his room to reclaim the title and is now awaiting a response from Guinness World Records.
A Guinness representative confirmed that it had received Orfield’s latest application, adding that the records management team was in the process of “evaluating both the submitter’s evidence and their testing criteria.” .
Theo Zing
