Microsoft, in 2015, entered the Guinness Book of World Records by building the quietest place on the planet.
This place is known as the anechoic chamber, located at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, “ultra-sensitive tests” conducted in 2015 estimated an average background noise reading of-20.35 dBA(decibels A-weighted-a measurement of the sound pressure level).
The word ‘anechoic’ means ‘without echo’. The longest time a person has stayed in the room is for an hour.
A few minutes after entering, you will hear your heartbeat. And after a few more minutes, you will hear your bones grinding and blood flowing.
The purpose of the anechoic chamber is not to hear anything but to cancel all external noise and enable you to hear different sounds from your own body.
A body is completely silent only when it is dead.
Environments which are considered ultra-quiet are louder than the human hearing threshold, about 0 decibels. For instance, a library reading room might estimate up to 40 decibels.
With no outside sound being able to enter the room, the pin-drop silence will feel as an unbearable ringing in your ears.
This would cause you to lose balance because the lack of reverberation in the room weakens your spatial awareness.
The Silent Room’s Design
Hundraj Gopal, principal designer of the chamber at Microsoft, said “When you turn your head, you can even hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud.”
It took two years to design the space.
The space is built of six layers of concrete and steel and is separate from the surrounding building. A range of vibration-damping springs is situated below. Within it, fibreglass wedges are mounted on the floor, ceiling and walls to hinder the sound waves before the waves bounce back into the room.
According to Steven J Orfield, the designer of the anechoic chamber, the room received “a legitimate measurement” of “-24.9dBA.”
Orfield informed the American daily New York Times that he has given an application for the chamber to retrieve its title and is now waiting for a response from Guinness World Record.
Confirming Orfield’s newest submission to the organisation, a representative from Guinness added that its record management team is working on “assessing both his evidence and their testing criteria.”
