They say that “silence is golden”, but there is a room in Minnesota in the USA that is so quiet that after a while you will become unbearable there. The room blocks out 99.99 percent of external sounds, and no one has yet been able to endure more than 45 minutes being in it. The quietest place in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records is located in South Minneapolis at Orfield Laboratories. To achieve exceptional silence, the room used meter-thick fiberglass acoustic platforms, double walls of insulated steel, and 30cm-thick concrete. 
The company's founder and president, Steven Orfield, said that when it gets so quiet, your hearing starts to adapt.
“The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You begin to hear your heart beat, sometimes your lungs move, or your stomach growls. In an anechoic chamber, you yourself become the sound,” he explained.
Orfield explained that this is very confusing and forces you to sit in one place. We focus on the sounds we hear when we walk. In an anechoic chamber, you don't have any signals that allow you to balance and maneuver. If you're here for half an hour, it's best to stay in your chair. 
This chamber is used by many manufacturers to test the volume of their products such as heart valves, display sound mobile phone, switch sound on car dashboard. It is also used to determine the sound quality.
But for a person, such a room can be a severe test. After a few minutes of being in it, you get used to the absence of sounds, starting to pick up fainter sounds. NASA astronauts who are trained by being placed in a tank filled with water in a room experience hallucinations after a while as our bodies try to create sounds out of nothing. 
With the lights off, the longest time a person could endure in this room was 45 minutes. The founder himself could endure only half an hour. According to him, the most distracting person is not noise, but silence.
The proverb says that silence is golden. However, it depends on how you use it. There is a place on our planet that can drive any person crazy with its silence. This is an anechoic chamber at the Orfield Laboratory in Minneapolis (USA).
The Orfield Anechoic Chamber is the quietest place in the world. Find out all the details about this state of the art torture device and sound research tool here.
The word "anechoic" comes from the phrase "without echo". That is, this is a room that does not create an echo, the walls of which do not reflect sound. In addition, the walls of such a chamber are designed in such a way that they do not let in sounds from the outside. Complete isolation.
Thus, an anechoic chamber is acoustically isolated from appearance space. And the quietest anechoic chamber is the one at the Orfield Laboratory. According to the Guinness Book of Records, this is the quietest place in the world.
Orfield Anechoic Chamber Facts
- Orfila's anechoic chamber is the quietest place in the world. USA, Minneapolis.
- The camera absorbs 99.9% of sounds.
- A person can stay in an anechoic chamber for about 20 minutes. Stephen Orfield was able to stay there for half an hour. The record is 45 minutes.
- Staying in such a quiet room for a long time causes discomfort, confusion, and auditory hallucinations.
- The Orfield chamber is used to test the noise emission of computer, medical and other equipment, as well as to evaluate the sound quality.
The quietest place in the world
Orfield Laboratories, which houses the world's quietest anechoic chamber, is located in Minneapolis, USA. According to developer Stephen Orfield, the camera absorbs 99.9% of all sound.
Perfect silence in the room is achieved through the use of sound-absorbing panels, as well as 30 cm walls of steel and concrete. As a result, no sound comes from outside. There are no objects inside that could make sounds. Orfield's anechoic chamber is hidden behind two sturdy soundproof doors.
The quietest place in the world is crazy. The rumble of the closing door is the last sound that a person visiting the cell will hear. After a few minutes, the hearing begins to adapt to perfect silence, and the brain catches the beating of its own heart, the sound of blood flow, the rumbling of the stomach and other body sounds that are normally inaudible.
A person who is accustomed to mostly navigate in space by the surrounding sound begins to feel uncomfortable. After about 20 minutes, the brain begins to make sounds, and auditory hallucinations appear. Imagine, because there is still no light in the room, since the lighting fixtures inside can become an additional source of sound. Over time, moving around in such a room and navigating it becomes impossible.
The creator of the camera, Stephen Orfield, was able to stay in his super quiet room for half an hour and still hasn't broken his own record. The absolute record is 45 minutes of being in total silence.
If you like silence and solitude, you are unlikely to choose a metropolis when going on vacation. Especially when there are such calm places in the world where nature and people's lives seem to be a continuation of each other, where the city itself seems to be imprinted in a majestic landscape and is perceived as part of it. They are so harmonious that today I want to exchange our frantic pace of life for the calmness of one of them.
1. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany
Quiet place
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a charming town on Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze. Located at an altitude of 3000 meters, it once represented two settlements, one of which was founded by the Romans, and the other by the Teutons. They were united only in 1936 on the eve of the Winter Olympic Games.
2. Settlement in the Himalayas, Tibet
Quiet place
The mysterious Faroe chain north of Scotland is hardly known to a wide range of tourists. For many years, the islands with their sheer cliffs remained difficult to access. For example, only one staircase leads to the village of Gasadalur, built during the British occupation of the islands during the Second World War. The 18 lucky people who live there now are safely sheltered from all adversity by two mountains 2300 feet high.
5. Colmar, France
Quiet place
Colmar is one of the most beautiful towns Alsace. Ancient streets and pavements, half-timbered houses, ancient stone buildings - all this creates an indelible impression. In addition, Colmar is the capital of Alsatian wines, and it is not for nothing that the Route du Vin, the Wine Road, originates from here.
6. Camden, Maine, USA
Quiet place
Formerly inhabited by Indians, Camden was colonized by the British in the 70s of the 18th century. At times civil war it served as something of a "negotiation point" for the Americans. Now 5,000 inhabitants live in this clean and cozy town, and in summer the ratio of tourists to the indigenous population of the city is 2 to 1.
7. Bled, Slovenia
Quiet place
Sheltered by picturesque mountains, Bled was first mentioned in 1004. It seemed so beautiful to the Holy Roman Emperor that it was presented as the greatest reward to the Bishop of Brixen. The church in Bled is located on an island in the middle of the lake of the same name. The city itself, with a population of 5,000 people, is now one of the most beautiful Slovenian resorts.
8. Manarola, Italy
Quiet place
Manarola is a small fishing town in Liguria, northern Italy. A rainbow of colorful houses is located on a rock hanging over a wild coastline Ligurian Sea. The city church dates back to 1338, making Manarola one of the oldest cities in the region.
9. Bibury, UK
Quiet place
Bibury is often called the most beautiful city in England, and not in vain. It was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and since then the town has seemed to be frozen in time. Most of the houses look the same as they did hundreds of years ago, and the river still carries its gray waters along the shady streets of Bibury.
10. Annecy, France
Quiet place
Annecy is probably even more picturesque than french alps surrounding it. Built around a 14th-century castle, the city is divided by small canals and streams that flow into the beautiful blue Lake Annecy.
11. Goreme, Türkiye (Underground city)
Quiet place
Now Gureme is an open-air museum. From the 6th century. until the end of the ninth century. Göreme was one of the largest Christian centers, and there were more than 400 churches in its vicinity. St. Paul found Goreme the most suitable place for the education of the righteous.
12. Tanby, Wales
Quiet place
From the Welsh name of the city, it roughly translates as "Little Fish Fortress". This naturally sheltered town with access to the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean was founded as early as 900 AD. After the Norman conquest of England, the city was fortified with a massive wall to prevent Welsh rebellions. Today it is more famous for its beauties than for its defensive structures.
13. Leavenworth, Washington, USA
quiet calm place
Vestmannaeyjar is a small archipelago south of Iceland with a population of about 4,000 people. The exact date of discovery of the islands is unknown, but it is assumed that the archipelago was discovered by Irish sailors and Vikings at the same time as Iceland. The islands are also famous for being captured in 1627 by the Ottoman fleet and Barbary pirates who drove people into slavery.
15. Queenstown, New Zealand
quiet calm place
Queenstown is located in the southwestern part of New Zealand's South Island. Located on the shores of Queenstown Bay of Lake Wakatipu, small lake glacial origin. The city is surrounded by picturesque mountains. In the 60s of the XIX century, gold was found here, and the city experienced a real Gold Rush.
16 Hidden Mountain Village - Jiuzhaigou, China
quiet calm place
Not much is known about these villages scattered across China that once served as strongholds for the military. Now you can only get there on horseback and get a unique insight into the culture of classical China.
17. Shirakawa-go, Japan
quiet calm place
Shirakawa-go is a small traditional settlement famous for its peaked roofs, adapted to withstand heavy snowfalls. The dense, mysterious forests and hills surrounding the village have made the area difficult to live in - except for the small plain where Shirakawa-go is located.
18. Pucon, Chile
quiet calm place
Far beyond the borders of his country, Pucon gained fame as the "capital active tourism Chile". This small town has gained popularity in the travel world thanks to its lake, volcano and wide variety of views. active rest that you can only imagine.
19. Morro de Sao Paulo, Brazil
quiet calm place
Morro de São Paulo is one of the quietest island cities in the world. The only way to get to the island is by boat or small planes, which travel regularly from El Salvador. Vehicles are prohibited on the island. The only way to travel long distances there is with a tractor that takes passengers to the beach, hotels or the airport.
20. Amedia, Kurdistan
quiet calm place
Amedia is a small colorful village perched on a hilltop in the Iraqi province of Dahuk. Amedia is 1,000 meters long and 500 meters wide, while being 1,400 meters above sea level. According to legend, Persian sorcerers and priests, who were famous in the art of sorcery, lived in the vicinity of the village. It was from here, according to some researchers, that the biblical three wise men went to Bethlehem to worship and present gifts to the baby Jesus.
They say that silence and stillness are worth their weight in gold. However, staying in the quietest room on the planet becomes unbearable in a very short time.
The record for being in an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratory, in southern Minneapolis, Minnesota, is 45 minutes.
The room, which absorbs 99.99% of all sounds, occupies the first line in the Guinness Book of Records, but staying in it for too long can cause hallucinations in a person.
Steven Orfield
The founder and president of the company, Steve Orfield, in his interview with MailOnline urges people to stay in this room in complete darkness. He considers this experience very important, although scary. There are already precedents: one reporter lasted only 45 minutes there - although this meager time was a record.
“Of course, the ears will adapt to such silence. But the quieter the room, the more sounds you hear: for example, your heartbeat, the movement of your lungs, and the seemingly very loud rumbling of your stomach. In an anechoic room, you yourself become the sound,” he said.
In an anechoic room, you yourself become the sound
In a "quiet room" it's best not to move at all, Orfield advises: "You focus on the sound as you walk. In an anechoic chamber, you don't have any signals. The perception of signals that allow you to balance and maneuver disappears. So it’s better to just sit in a chair.”
Steven Orfield
The silent camera is used by companies all over America. NASA, for example, tests astronauts in it to see how soon hallucinations come.
As Orfield explained, space is one big, anechoic chamber, so it's important to make sure astronauts can stay focused and productive in those conditions.
It is also used for official sound testing by many manufacturers to measure the volume level of their product. It can be the sound of a mobile phone or a car dashboard switch, or the sound of a heart valve.
