In 1969, Steve Orfield had just graduated from college. He started working as a sales representative in the office furniture industry. At that time, cubicles designed to keep employees separated for privacy were becoming popular.
Orfield was tasked with selling one such cubicle, which was advertised as having absolute sound isolation. People outside could not eavesdrop on phone conversations happening within, nor could they be disturbed by any noises from inside.
The concept of soundproof rooms has been in the works since the 1960s.
But it was just advertising. The cubicle did not work effectively. No one knew why its design failed, not even the manufacturer. Orfield left the job, and a few years later, he was seen constructing an entire laboratory in Minneapolis.
Inside the Orfield Laboratory at Brigham Young University in the United States, there is a chamber known as the quietest room on Earth. Orfield succeeded in creating a room that eliminates all sound emanating from it.
Steve Orfield inside the quietest room on Earth that he created.
However, it is a treasure that Orfield could not sell to anyone; he turned it into a multidisciplinary research center for all experiments related to sound.
Companies would bring their products to test the noise they might generate. NASA even sent astronauts there to help them adapt to the silence of space.
What happens inside the quietest room in the world?
The room is called an anechoic chamber, with ‘anechoic’ in Latin meaning “no echo” or “no reflection“. It is essentially a chamber within a chamber within another chamber.
All the walls, floor, and ceiling are lined with thick fiberglass wedge panels, nearly 100 cm thick. Additionally, the six surfaces of the chamber are covered with steel plates up to 10 cm thick. Lastly, there is an outer layer of concrete that is 30 cm thick.
The six surfaces of the chamber are covered with steel plates up to 10 cm thick.
Orfield states that the quietest rooms you might enter, such as a bedroom with minimal noise, are around 30 decibels. However, the average noise level inside the Orfield Laboratory is just -13 decibels. This means the sound waves present are below the threshold that the human ear can perceive.
This echo-free chamber is indeed the quietest place on Earth. And there are strange rumors about it. People say you cannot stand upright inside. When the lights are turned off and there is no sound around, you can lose your sense of direction, feel dizzy, and even nauseous.
In the absence of sound, the only thing you can hear is the noise from your own body.
Some people believe they may go insane in this room. Silence can be a form of torture. With no external sounds, the only noises you can hear are those from your own body: the rustle of clothes, the sound of swallowing, breathing, heartbeats, and even the sound of blood flowing in your brain.
Can you really go insane after 45 minutes in the quietest room on Earth?
