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11th April 2012

Post with 14 notes

Quietest place on Earth mutes all sounds, messes with your head

NASA heads to a lab in Minnesota to put astronauts through acoustic torture tests

By Mike Wehner, Tecca

The anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratoriesin Minnesota can mute 99.99% of all sound, and holds the current Guinness World Record as the quietest place on the planet. The walls of the chamber are lined with sound-absorbing baffles that can capture noise and mute it in an instant. 

Silence, it turns out, can put a great strain on the human brain. Researchers at NASA test the room’s unique acoustic capabilities on humans rather than hardware. The noiselessness is used to simulate the silence of space — an environment astronauts would be well served to grow accustomed to.

What they’ve found is that when all outside noise is removed from an enclosure, human hearing will do its best to find something to listen to. In a room where almost 100% of sound is muted, people begin to hear things like their own heartbeat at a greatly amplified volume. As the minutes tick by in absolute quiet, the human mind begins to lose its grip, causing test subjects to hallucinate.

NASA then monitors how the would-be space explorers react, and whether they can get past the very obvious awkwardness of seeing or hearing things that aren’t actually there. According to lab officials, the longest anyone has lasted is 45 minutes before being allowed to hear the sweet sounds of planet Earth once again.

In the end, the chamber has proven a valuable scientific tool, just don’t plan on renting it for some peace and quiet — it may do more harm than good.

Tagged: quietsilencenasaspaceastronautastronautslabtechsciencebrainmindsoundacoustic

Source: Yahoo!

  1. inquisitormusic reblogged this from momologue and added:
    duuude i want to go to one of these and have silence-induced hallucination!!! wicked
  2. voodooladyy reblogged this from understandingtheuniverse
  3. thoughtcontainment reblogged this from darylelockhart and added:
    John Cage had a few words about this sort of thing.
  4. understandingtheuniverse reblogged this from darylelockhart
  5. darylelockhart reblogged this from momologue
  6. momologue posted this