So far we have been hearing and using this phrase’Pin Drop Silence’but none had experienced it yet. But now micro soft has built such a chamber you can hear your own breathing.
When working in an office you are us surrounded with different sounds, the computers clacking away or colleagues chattering, etc. But Le Salle Mun roe’s office is the quietest place on the planet where he is surrounded by total silence. “It’s so quiet that i can even hear the blood rushing through my veins.”
The specially constructed chamber is hidden in the depths of Building 87 at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, where the firm’s hardware laboratories are based. Microsoft’s engineers built the room – known as an an-echoic chamber – to help them test new equipment they were developing and in 2015 it set the official world record for silence when the background noise level inside was measure at 20.6 decibels.
It took almost two years to design and build the chamber where Mun roe’s team now spend their days putting Microsoft’s technology through its paces. Even finding a suitable building took nearly eight months of testing to find one quiet enough to house it.
You would think that a place so quiet would also be peaceful. But for those who spend any time in there, it is far from the case. Gopal often gives visitors to Microsoft a tour of the audio laboratories, which includes a trip inside the anichoic chamber – and most find the experience very uncomfortable. “Some people want out within a few seconds,” he confides. “They say they just can’t be in there. It unsettles almost everybody. They can hear people breathing on the other side of the room and hear stomachs gurgling. A small number of people feel dizzy.”
“This insulation makes a huge difference,” explains Hundraj Gopal, principal human factors engineer at Microsoft who led the team that built the an echoic chamber. The chamber itself floats on top of 68 vibration damping springs mounted on its own separate foundation slab. If a jet is taking off outside the building you will hear little more than a whisper inside the final concrete bunker.
“But there are people who do love it and say it is meditative,” he reveals. “They find it relaxing. But the longest I’ve seen someone stay inside for is an hour, and that was to raise money for charity. I think if you spent too much time in there it would drive you crazy. Every swallow you make is really loud.”
The team has also had a number of applications from researchers who want to use the chamber to conduct biomedical research. There is some research, for example, that suggests short-term sensory deprivation can cause psychotic episodes and hallucinations.
Credits: Images Microsoft
via: BBC
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