George Foy: Quietest Place on Earth

[zellerzone]

[I've seen many gee-whiz articles about this anechoic chamber. This is
the first good one I've found. From the Guardian (UK) website]

My quest started when I was in the New York subway. My children were
whining, four trains came screaming into the station at once and I put
my hands over my ears and cowered – the noise was deafening.

In cities, the ever-present dull background roar of planes, cars,
machinery and voices is a fact of life. There is no escape from it and
I was beginning to be driven mad by it.

In an attempt to recapture some peace, I decided to go on a mission to
find the quietest place on Earth; to discover whether absolute silence
exists. I travelled to a Cistercian monastery, an American Indian
sweat lodge and a nickel mine 2km underground – all very quiet but not
the holy grail of silence. The one place I was most excited about
visiting was the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in
Minnesota.

This is a small room, massively insulated with layers of concrete and
steel to block out exterior sources of noise, and internally lined
with crosshatched buffers that absorb all sound. Even the floor is a
suspended mesh to stop any sound of footfalls. If a soft whisper is
measured at 20 decibels, the anechoic chamber is 1/16th of that. It is
the Guinness World Records's quietest place on earth – 99.9% sound-
absorbent.

Ironically, far from being peaceful, most people find its perfect
quiet upsetting. Being deprived of the usual reassuring ambient sounds
can induce fear – it explains why sensory deprivation is a form of
torture. Astronauts do part of their training in anechoic chambers at
Nasa, so they can learn to cope with the silence of space. The
presence of sound means things are working; it's business as usual –
when sound is absent, that signals malfunction. On 9/11, despite being
out of mobile phone reception, a huge number of hikers abandoned their
walks. They hadn't heard about the terrorist attacks; they were just
spooked by the lack of aeroplane noise and sensed something was wrong.

I had heard being in an anechoic chamber for longer than 15 minutes
can cause extreme symptoms, from claustrophobia and nausea to panic
attacks and aural hallucinations – you literally start hearing things.
A violinist tried it and hammered on the door after a few seconds,
demanding to be let out because he was so disturbed by the silence.

I booked a 45-minute session – no one had managed to stay in for that
long before. I felt apprehensive for two reasons: would I go stark,
staring mad and tear off my clothes? Or would I simply be disappointed
it wasn't as enjoyable as I'd hoped?

When the heavy door shut behind me, I was plunged into darkness
(lights can make a noise). For the first few seconds, being in such a
quiet place felt like nirvana, a balm for my jangled nerves. I
strained to hear something and heard… nothing.

Then, after a minute or two, I became aware of the sound of my
breathing, so I held my breath. The dull thump of my heartbeat became
apparent – nothing I could do about that. As the minutes ticked by, I
started to hear the blood rushing in my veins. Your ears become more
sensitive as a place gets quieter, and mine were going overtime. I
frowned and heard my scalp moving over my skull, which was eerie, and
a strange, metallic scraping noise I couldn't explain. Was I
hallucinating? The feeling of peace was spoiled by a tinge of
disappointment – this place wasn't quiet at all. You'd have to be dead
for absolute silence.

Then I stopped obsessing about what bodily functions I could hear and
began to enjoy it. I didn't feel afraid and came out only because my
time was up; I would happily have spent longer in there. Everyone was
impressed that I'd beaten the record, but having spent so long
searching for quiet, I was comfortable with the feeling of absolute
stillness. Afterwards I felt wonderfully rested and calm.

My desire for silence changed my life. I found that making space for
moments of quiet in my day is the key to happiness – they give you a
chance to think about what you want in life. How can you really focus
on what's important if you're distracted by constant background noise?
If you can occasionally become master of your own sound environment –
from turning off the TV to moving to the country, as I did – you
become a lot more accepting of the noises of everyday life.

• As told to Emily Cunningham

[zellerzone]

I first read about anechoic chambers more than fifty years ago. The
article said "Lock a man up in there overnight and he's likely to go
crazy." And there was a picture ot some kind of device being tested in
such a chamber. The walls and ceiling were covered with styrofoam
wedges, and I could see from the picture that the floor was some kind
of wire mesh with more of those wedges underneath. The caption on the
picture said where it was. I don't know if it's still there, but I
don't see why not, because I saw that very room almost twenty years
ago. It was being used for storage. Yes, I did lock myself in there
for a few minutes. It was nice and quiet. The door had a latch on it
like a walk-in freezer, and a plate engraved with "RF shielded
anechoic room". The RF shielding was probably because of the 50,000
watt AM transmitter a mile or so away. 


The Bell Telephone Pavilllion at the 1964 New York World's Fair had an
anechoic corridor. Unfortunately it was the only place in that whole
damn fair where the line moved quickly. 

[zellerzone]