Have you ever found yourself surrounded with total silence? As in, you really can't hear anything except for your breathing and the buzzing of your ears. It's quite relaxing if you're looking for some peace and quiet, but also can be very disorienting.
But believe it or not, silence like that is not actually silent enough. A human being can detect to up to 0 decibels of sound (the lowest level of sound a human can detect). But in Microsoft's Building 87 in Washington, there lies an "anechoic chamber", designed to be the quietest room in the world.
If us human can detect up to 0 decibels of sound, could you imagine being in a room measuring -20.6 db? Microsoft's anechoic chambers are so silent; it almost reached the level of silence Earth is capable of holding, which is -23 db. Theirs is just like, 3 points louder.
The recorded quietest sound in the planet is called "Brownian motion", the sound particles make when they rub on each other in any gas or liquid. Microsoft's anechoic chambers are almost as quiet as that.
Because of this, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Building 87's anechoic chambers to be the quietest place on the planet. The previous record holder was Orfield Laboratories, with their quietest room measuring to just -13db.
So what exactly does it feel like to be inside the most silent room in the world? A Gizmodo reporter recently had the fortunate experience to try it out. Talking about the experience, he said: "My own voice sounded like it was having trouble coming out of my head. For a moment, I felt genuine disorientation, like the light-headedness you can get with low blood sugar."
Others who also tried being inside the anechoic chamber said that because of the intense level of quietness, they can hear their blood flowing to their veins, the sound their eyes make when they blink, and their muscles doing a rippling sound when they move. Apparently they could not bear being inside the room for so long in fear that they will go mad.
Microsoft built their anechoic chamber to test out their latest products. According to Hundraj Gopal, Ph.D., Microsoft Principal Human Factors Engineer, "We designed this and other super-quiet acoustically-controlled chambers to engineer and build best-in-class audio products at Microsoft. We use these facilities for designing products like the Surface, HoloLens and Cortana, that we take great pride in."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
