“The quietest place on Earth makes its claim less than a block from a bustling liquor store, adjacent to a city bus stop, under the flight path of jumbo jets, and not far from a playground that hosts a daily scream fest worthy of earplugs. And yet, there it is: the anechoic chamber at [Minneapolis-based] Orfield Labs, an office-size studio used for testing sound equipment. Engineers tested the chamber not too long ago and found, or rather didn’t find, sound. What they didn’t find measured below the threshold for human ears, 0 decibels, and was as quiet as negative 9.4 decibels, an absence so profound that a person standing in the room for more than a few minutes would begin to hear his or her own ear making noise as their brain struggled to understand what was happening.”