Daily Dose of Weird: Quietest Place on Earth Might Drive You Insane [VIDEO]

Have you ever just wished for a few minutes of "peace and quiet?" Of course you have. Personally, I could deal without the occasional train whistle or lawnmower waking me up on the weekends (when I'm supposed to be sleeping in); and sometimes the constant sound of email and text message notifications makes me want to throw my phone against a wall. Turns out, though, that complete silence could drive a person crazy, literally.

Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota have what's called an anechoic chamber, a room that completely blocks reflection of sound waves.  Orfield's chamber can mute 99.99% of all noise, and holds the Guinness World Record for quietest place on the planet.

NASA uses the chamber to simulate what astronauts might experience in the silence of outer space.

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.

[via Tecca via Yahoo! Games.]

Well it's a good thing a place like this exists!

Here's a CG interpretation of how the chamber works:

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