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ESA's LEAF 154 Decibel Speaker Is So Loud It Can Kill You

This Speaker Is So Loud It Will Kill You
Huffington Post UK
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How far would you go for the ultimate sound system? Surround sound? A sub-woofer the size of a family car?

How about this...

This horn is the loudest sound system in Europe and it could actually kill you.

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Engineer Kees van Zijtveldt and the massive horn

It's been built by the European Space Agency (ESA) to make sure satellites can withstand the effects of the massive noise associated with blasting through the atmosphere.

To do this requires a massive 154 Decibels (Dbs) of sound - the equivalent of standing next to a bunch of fighter jets taking off.

It only takes 85 Dbs to cause hearing loss in humans.

The huge horn is housed in a sound-proof room at the ESA's Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF) Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

It's 16.4 metres tall, 11 wide and nine metres deep and uses nitrogen gas to sound it - only no human will ever actually hear it at full volume.

As a safety feature, LEAF can operate only once all the doors are closed. Steel-reinforced concrete walls safely contain its noise, coated with epoxy resin to reflect noise to produce a uniform sound field within the chamber.

The chamber itself is supported on rubber bearing pads to isolate it from its surroundings.

There are louder speaker such as the ridiculously impressive 60-inch subwoofer built by Richard Clark and David Navone along with Mark Eldridge.

This monster can "liquify your brain" pumping out a monstrous 188 Dbs.

There's even some chaps who turned an entire room into a massive reflex-based subwoofer.

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