Echo chamber
Echo chamberiStock

Sometimes the best discoveries happen by accident. That was how the invention of ice cream and soda came about, and now another case can be added - the discovery of the place with the longest echo in the world.

In the depths of Scotland, in a huge fuel tank, there is an old tunnel 237 meters long. Although the tunnel is not intended for humans and was used to extract fuel from the ground, it has recently been named the longest-echoed site in the world.

The mine, built by the British navy before World War II, was crowned only in recent years by the new title because of its ideal conditions for creating an echo. As part of war preparations, the army wanted to create huge shelters where it could store fuel for emergencies that would be unexposed to aerial bombardment. Across the UK there are still several underground sites like this, but only one of them is long enough to create the perfect echo.

According to experts, the structure of the tunnel does not allow the sound waves to spread to the sides and directs them toward the far wall. The huge cylinder swaddled in hard rock contains every little noise along the 237 meters in the tunnel to the opposite wall and sends it back. The impressive echo lasts for 112 seconds, breaking the previous record by only 15 seconds. Visitors are asked to keep quiet so as not to cause more noise in the small tunnel.

In the video you can hear some of the echoes that are heard in the tunnel after a shot, the echo continues to be absorbed only by vibration instruments and not by the human ear. So if you're tired of talking to the mountains, you're invited to take to longer conversations to the tunnel: