Meanwhile, another anechoic chamber is hoping to earn the new title of the quietest room in the world. Located at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, the room achieved “a legitimate measurement” of “–24.9 dBA,” according to Steven J. Orfield, who designed the space.
As per reports, the room has been designed in a manner that can help one focus and hear the sounds produced by their own body. While it begins by hearing the sound of one's heartbeat, one can eventually also hear the blood flowing in their body and also of their bones crunching.
Orfield Labs hosts visitor tours of its facility (including the chamber) as a public service, but they aren't cheap. A 90-minute tour with 20 minutes in the chamber, minimum of two people, costs $200 per person, and tours have to be scheduled weeks in advance.
Dangers Of Staying Too Long In The World's Quietest Room
Besides exposing the ear to the unpleasant sounds of tinnitus, the deafening silence of this place can lead to mental insanity and the person may start hallucinating according to the scientists who created the chamber.
They are strange environments with sound-proof ceilings, walls, and doors. But, even though they are very sound-proof, if a person were to step into such a room, the dB reading still wouldn't be zero. Why? Because it's virtually impossible for someone to stay in that room without producing sounds that are above 0 dB.
The entry fee is $200 per person, with a $400 minimum. There's also an option to reserve the chamber for $600 an hour in order to take the Orfield Challenge and see how long you can last. As of June 2022, the record to beat is two hours.
Orfield, of Orfield Laboratories. “You'll hear your heart beating,” Orfield was quoted as saying. And: “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.” The experience was so “disconcerting,” The Daily Mail reported, that no one had ever “survived” a visit of longer than 45 minutes.
Dubbed the anechoic chamber, it is located at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Only very few people managed to survive in this room for a long period of time - at most an hour. After a few minutes, you will start to hear your heartbeat.
Only very few people have been able to withstand being in the room for a long period of time — at most an hour. After a few minutes, you'll already start to hear your own heartbeat.
Silence is a 'sound' you hear, study suggests
The idea wasn't simply that these silences made people experience illusions, the researchers said. It was that the same illusions that scientists thought could only be triggered with sounds worked just as well when the sounds were replaced by silences.
Steve Orfield explained: “what the chamber tends to do is it tends to scare people because when you get in the chamber, everything gets tremendously quiet. You feel like there's pressure on your ears – but it's actually pressure moving away from your ears.
Dhaka (Bangladesh) – 119dB
In April 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) named Bangladesh's capital the world's noisiest city. In 1999, the World Health Organisation published guidelines stating that noise levels above 70dB over a prolonged period can lead to a greater chance of hearing loss.
While it's important not to expose yourself to loud noises, you should also avoid spending too much time in a completely quiet environment. Being deprived of auditory stimulation can lead to hypersensitivity to sounds. Your ears get used to the silence and can no longer bear to be in a noisy environment.
If you stand in it for long enough, you start to hear your heartbeat. A ringing in your ears becomes deafening. When you move, your bones make a grinding noise. Eventually you lose your balance, because the absolute lack of reverberation sabotages your spatial awareness.
However, what's more, astonishing is that the room gets so quiet that the maximum a human has been able to sit in the chamber is for 45 minutes.
In the anechoic chamber, speech sounds very muffled, like when your ears need to pop in an airplane. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis is the quietest place in the world, with a background noise reading of –9.4 decibels.
Effects on the human body
Your stomach rumbling and gurgling loudly. Your throat swallowing. The hissing from your breathing lungs. A low-pitched hum from your ears – louder than the effects of tinnitus.
In general, the interior of an anechoic chamber can be very quiet, with typical noise levels in the 10–20 dBA range. In 2005, the best anechoic chamber measured at −9.4 dBA. In 2015, an anechoic chamber on the campus of Microsoft broke the world record with a measurement of −20.6 dBA.
It's noisy. The brain creates noise to fill the silence, and we hear this as tinnitus. Perhaps only someone with profound deafness can achieve this level of silence, so paradoxically loud.
Healthy silence can show a level of vulnerability and comfort within a relationship. At other times, one or both individuals may need a break from verbal communication, just being content in each other's space. Healthy silence can also be utilized when a person is angry and escalating.
Any sounds below the threshold of 0 dBA is undetectable by the human ear. And at such a low decibal level, the environment becomes so disconcerting that people have actually started to hallucinate. "When it's quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear.