Mumbai (Commonwealth Union)_ Imagine sitting in a room so quiet that you can hear your heartbeat, your stomach digesting food, blood flow, and your eyelids blinking. It may sound incredible, yet such a location exists and is recognized as the quietest room on Earth. The anechoic room at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota, holds the Guinness World Record for the lowest ambient sound level ever recorded. On November 19, 2021, the noise level inside was measured at an astonishing -24.9 decibels. That’s quieter than complete silence, so quiet that the sound seems to disappear.
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The room isn’t a tourist attraction; it’s primarily used for scientific research and product testing. Engineers use it to measure how quiet or loud certain devices are, from medical equipment to electronics. However, for those who have witnessed it personally, the stillness might be disturbing. Visitors describe hearing internal biological noises they had never heard before, such as the flow of blood through their veins, the slight grumble of their stomach, or the smallest movements of their eyeballs. This remarkable stillness is largely attributed to the chamber’s construction. According to Guinness World Records, the room is made up of many layers of soundproofing materials. The outside shell is made of strong masonry and concrete, with the inner chamber hung on vibration-damping springs. Its walls are lined with massive fiberglass wedges, over three feet thick, that absorb 99.99% of sound. This design eliminates all echo and reflects none of the sound back to the listener, creating an acoustic vacuum.
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Orfield’s chamber first earned its place in the record books in 2004 with a sound level of -9.4 decibels. That record was broken in 2012 with a reading of -13 dBA, but in 2015, it lost the title to another high-tech room, this time at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft’s anechoic chamber, located on its 87-building campus, became the official record holder. Built inside a 21-foot cube and lined with four-foot-long fiberglass wedges, the chamber achieves a staggering -20.35 decibels. The floor is made from a grid of sound-absorbing cables, and the entire room rests on 68 isolated springs to minimize vibration.
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This chamber isn’t just silent; it’s eerily silent. Inside, even the smallest bodily noises become noticeable. Engineers who work in space say it’s common to hear joints creak, lungs expand, or ears ring in the absence of outside noise. The chamber is not open to the public, and access is limited to Microsoft engineers and researchers who use it for audio and hardware testing. Microsoft has confirmed that some have stayed in the chamber for up to an hour, despite rumors that no one can last more than 45 minutes. Still, many find the experience disorienting. After exiting, even everyday sounds, like cars passing, footsteps, and birds chirping, can feel jarringly loud by comparison.
