In 1969, Steve Orfield had just graduated from college. He graduated from college and worked as a salesman for the office furniture industry. At that time, work boxes separating people to keep each office worker’s privacy were becoming popular.
Orfield was tasked with selling such a box, which was advertised as having the ability to completely block the center. Outsiders can’t overhear the occupants’ phone conversations, or be bothered by any annoying noises coming from inside.
Absolutely soundproof rooms have been cherished since the 1960s.
But it’s just advertising. The box didn’t work properly. No one knows why its design failed, not even the manufacturer can explain it. Orfield quit, and a few years later, he was found to have built an entire laboratory in Minneapolis.
Inside the Orfield Laboratory located at Birghham Young University, USA, there is a room dubbed the quietest room on Earth . Orfield has succeeded in creating a room that cancels out any sound coming from it.
Steve Orfield inside the quietest room on Earth he created.
But it was a treasure that Orfield could not sell to anyone, turning it into a multidisciplinary research center, serving the most delicate of audio-related experiments.
Companies will bring their products here to test the noise they can make. And NASA sent astronauts to help them adapt to the silence of space.
What happens inside the quietest room in the world?
The room is called the anechoic chamber , with anechoic in Latin meaning ” no echo ” – “no reflection” or “no echo “. It’s essentially a room, inside a room, inside another room.
All of its walls, floor, and ceiling are lined with sponge-like fiberglass wedges nearly 100 centimeters thick. Next, the six sides of the chamber are covered with steel plates up to 10 cm thick. Outside is another layer of concrete 30 cm thick.
The six sides of the chamber are covered with steel plates up to 10cm thick.
Orfield says the quietest rooms you’ll ever walk into, such as a bedroom, have the lowest noise levels around 30 decibels. But the average noise level inside Orfield Labs is only -13 decibels. That means the sound waves that exist in this are below the threshold of the human ear can perceive.
This room without echoes is literally the quietest place on Earth. And there are strange rumors about it. It is said that you cannot stand in it. When the lights are off, and there’s not a single sound around, you’ll be disoriented, dizzy, and nauseous.
When there is no sound, the only thing you can hear is the sounds coming from your own body.
Some people believe that they can go crazy in this room. Because silence can be like a form of torture. When there is no sound coming from outside, the only thing you can hear is the sounds coming from your own body. It was the rustle of clothes, the sound of swallowing saliva, the sound of breathing, the beating of a heartbeat and even the sound of blood flowing in the brain.
Do you really go crazy after 45 minutes in the quietest room on Earth?