It’s an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis:
Inside the room it’s silent. So silent that the background noise measured is actually negative decibels, -9.4 dBA. Steven Orfield, the lab’s founder, told Hearing Aid Know: “We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark – one person stayed in there for 45 minutes. When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. 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.”
But the room isn’t just for torturing people. Companies test their products in it to find out just how loud they are. And NASA has sent astronauts to help them adapt to the silence of space. For you and me, however, the room is a deeply disorienting place.
The Dish 