The Science of Smell

Hmm, so he paid chemist to prepare scents that they speculated may be similar to something that either could not be smelled, like the surface of the sun, or has not existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Where do i get a job just mixing chemicals up like that and claiming it is what triceratops dung might have smelled like?

That sounds really creative. I could think of some upcoming fragrance lines now:

"Double Cheeseburger With A Large Order Of Fries"

"Chicken Nuggets With Honey BBQ Sauce And A Chocolate Milkshake"

"Chicken Noodle Soup With A Soda On The Side"

I wonder what celebrity would promote these fumes?

Yes but these are not smells that people will never experience.

perhaps, but who wouldn't love the aroma of chicken noodle soup following them on a rainy day - comforting, I would say.

Stupdi question time: if nobody has ever smelled these smells, and nobody can ever smell them, how do you know that's exactly what they're supposed to smell like?

This is exactly the advantage to working in this field. There is no real QA or liability. You can just mix almost anything up and claim it smells like the surface of the sun. Who wouldn't want to get paid just to mix some chemicals up, and then you just make up some claims that it is developed through an intensive scientific study, blah, blah, and collect a fat pay check (you might have to play the oppressed artistic genius a little bit to sell some of the wealthier elitist families on the investment).

Smell on the surface of the sun? there is nor air there so you cannot smell nothing but your burnt nostrils.

Anyway on what bases do they construct these smells? because a lot of factors and even the amount of molecules can influence a smell drastically

GA! The possibility of getting it right smells fishy to me, too. (Although I must admit it's an intriguing concept. I wonder just how rigorous the scent development was?)

According to a description I found online smells like the scent of the surface of the sun were approximated by using the scents of seven earth metals heated to their melting point: hydrogen and helium with a molten cocktail of copper, terbium, strontium, antimony and europium. Sounds like a new scent by Calvin Klein!

Wow sounds like someone put on a blindfold and threw darts at the periodic table, and missed all the low end products of fusion like nitrogen, sulfur, Chlorine, etc.. I wonder how much they pay for selecting such compounds. also, It kind of seems to me like molten copper, as well as the other metals, vapors would desensitive the olifactory nerve quite quickly.

Geez, and here I wasted all that time learning that hydrogen and helium were colorless, odorless gases. I'm SO disappointed...

thank you for the post.

i have often wondered about something which although it may be contained in the text is apparently a cstom westerners have for some unknown reason not found appaealing the practice of reading a person scent.

the ancients knew the smel of human emotions as do animals. it is too bad the people who have made some what i consider less than well reasoned comments about the book before having read it are not aware of theinfluence of smell /scent on human and animal reactions to situations they are presented with in thier immediate and previous years of thier lives.

great book great review a double thumbs up vote.

'da ber