The Quietest Place On Earth Will Cause You To Hallucinate In 45 Minutes 332
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Industry Tap reports that there is a place so quiet you can hear your heart beat, your lungs breathe and your stomach digest. It's the anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs in Minnesota where 3ft of sound-proofing fiberglass wedges and insulated steel and concrete absorbs 99.99% of sound, making it the quietest place in the world. 'When it's quiet, ears will adapt,' says the company's founder and president, Steven Orfield. 'The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You'll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.' The chamber is used by a multitude of manufacturers, to test how loud their products are and the space normally rents for $300 to $400 an hour. 'It's used for formal product testing, for research into the sound of different things — heart valves, the sound of the display of a cellphone, the sound of a switch on a car dashboard.' But the strangest thing about the chamber is that sensory deprivation makes the room extremely disorienting, and people can rarely stay in the dark space for long. As the minutes tick by in absolute quiet, the human mind begins to lose its grip, causing test subjects to experience visual and aural hallucinations. 'We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark — one reporter stayed in there for 45 minutes,' says Orfield who says even he can't stand the quiet for more than about 30 minutes. Nasa uses a similar chamber to test its astronauts putting them in a water-filled tank inside the room to see 'how long it takes before hallucinations take place and whether they could work through it.'"
Nein (Score:4, Funny)
Cool, a real geodesic psychoisolation chamber
Re:BULL CRAP! (Score:5, Funny)
And people who are deaf are all out of their minds?
No wonder deaf people are always flailing their arms at each other. It all makes perfect sense now!
Re:That's nothing (Score:2, Funny)
In my defence, I need the music to drown out the voices in my head.
Re:45 minutes? (Score:5, Funny)
In there, no-one can hear you barf
Re:Where can I get in one? (Score:5, Funny)
So, build your own (Score:5, Funny)
Dig a hole about forty or fifty feet deep. Make a monolithic pour of waterproofed concrete. Install the insulation and the anechoic surfaces. You'll want at least a couple soundproof hatches in the access tunnel, maybe three or four, to eliminate noise from the wind or whatever.
With your own chamber in your back yard, you can deprive yourself anytime. When you tire of that, you can use it to hide your armory, or your gold, or dead bodies. Whatever needs to be hidden, you've got the place to hide it. Plan for the future though - a guy never knows just how many people he might meet who desperately need to be bludgeoned to death!
Re:Sensory deprivation tanks (Score:3, Funny)
I remember reading abobut this in Feynman's autobiography. IIRC he wanted to experience some halucinations without subjecting his brain to any chemicals. I've always wanted to try it, but have never had access to a sensory deprivation tank. Fortunately there were plenty of chemicals.
Re:Where can I get in one? (Score:3, Funny)
That's what she said...
Re:That's nothing (Score:3, Funny)
They're the ones that told you to turn the music on. They just want it so you can't hear them talking behind your head.
Re:Vacuum (Score:5, Funny)
If a tree falls in a vacuum chamber in the woods, the sound is carried by the container to the surrounding air...
... whether or not there is anyone there to asphyxiate while trying to hear it.
Re:BULL CRAP! (Score:5, Funny)