The quietest place on earth, an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories 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.
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. If you chatted with someone, your speech would measure around 60 decibels on a sound-level meter.
The room, situated at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, is known as an “anechoic” (literally “without echo”) chamber, and it took two years to design.
A physicist will say there is no such thing as “absolute” silence. The lowest sound level in the natural world is that of particles moving through gas or liquid, known as Brownian motion. But tech companies have tried to top this, creating sound-sealed rooms known as anechoic chambers.
The quietest place on earth is an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota. The space is so quiet that the longest anybody has been able to bear it was an entire 45 minutes. It is 99.99 percent sound absorbent and holds the Guinness World Record for the world's quietest place.
“Silence and periods of calm stimulate brain growth and relieve tension, which can result in a higher sense of well-being, as people can then feel more relaxed generally,” says Prunty. “When this occurs, sleep quality improves.”
Yes, that's minus 9.4 decibels! The labrotory's founder, Steven Orfield, said, “”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.
Public fascination with the room exploded 10 years ago, with an article on The Daily Mail's website. “The Longest Anyone Can Bear Earth's Quietest Place is 45 Minutes,” The Mail declared.
Members of the public must book a tour to visit the room, and are only allowed in for a short, supervised stay. According to the lab's website, only members of the media are permitted to stay in the chamber alone for prolonged periods of time.
In space, no one can hear you scream. This is because there is no air in space – it is a vacuum. Sound waves cannot travel through a vacuum.
It ranks Dhaka of Bangladesh as the loudest city in the world with a noise level of 119 dB, followed by Moradabad in India with 114dB and Islamabad in Pakistan with 105dB.
A Quiet Place is available to stream in Australia now on Google Play and Apple TV and Prime Video Store and Paramount+.
The quietest place on earth, an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories 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.
There have been many horror films over the years, but “A Quiet Place” found a way to be original: a feature length film that had next-to-no dialogue, making it essentially a silent movie with sound effects.
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.
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.
Although the Guinness World Records do not have a world record set for the longest time without blinking, Record Setter claims that Michael Thomas from Florida has been able to keep his eyes open without blinking for 1 hour and 5.61 seconds.
Being silent allows us to channel our energies. It gives us the clarity we need to calmly face challenges and uncertainty. The hour of silence I practice each morning, and encourage you to practice as well, can be a time for collecting our thoughts, training our minds, and deciding how we want to enter into the day.
Silence can mean many things in interpersonal relationships. It's ambiguous. It can express lots of different emotions ranging from joy, happiness, grief, embarrassment to anger, denial, fear, withdrawal of acceptance or love. What it means depends on the context.