Enter One of the World’s Quietest Rooms

进入世界上最为宁静的房间之一

Science Quickly

2025-10-03

20 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Inside one of the quietest rooms in the world, host Rachel Feltman meets artist-in-residence Seth Cluett at the historic anechoic chamber at Bell Labs to explore the science of silence and sound perception. From popping balloons in total silence to hearing your own nervous system, we dive into psychoacoustics, audio innovation and the emotional impact of sound design. Along the way, we uncover how Bell Labs shaped everything from stereo audio to the voice of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Science Quickly is a Signal Awards finalist! Support us by casting your vote before October 9 at the following link: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting?utm_campaign=signal4_finalists_finalistnotification_092325&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio#/2025/shows/genre/science E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Jeffery DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check the show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • This experiment just pops a balloon.

  • And normally when a balloon would pop, you'd hear the whole room just kind of expand, right?

  • Yeah, pretty loud.

  • Yeah, pretty loud.

  • But in this room, there's none of that.

  • So you're going to hear it as a very sharp sound that just disappears completely.

  • Cool.

  • Welcome to the Anticolor chamber.

  • Watch your step.

  • Wow, it is already super quiet in here.

  • And it's gonna get even more quiet when we close the door.

  • It did get a lot more quiet.

  • Yeah.

  • Welcome to Science Quickly.

  • I'm Rachel Feldman and today I'm here with Seth Kluwit at Nokia Bell Labs.

  • And you may notice if you're listening to this or

  • if you're watching it that there's some interesting stuff going on with the sound.

  • Seth, would you tell us more about why that is?

  • Yeah, so we're in the historic anechoic chamber at Bell Labs.

  • It is a room that absorbs 99.999% of sound wave propagation and eliminates sound from the outside almost entirely.