You smell that?
That’s the Universe, son.
I love the smell of the Universe in the morning.
Hello everyone, Julian here for DNews.
Space is awe inspiring, and whether you’re looking at high resolution photos of Andromeda
from Hubble or just staring at the night sky through your window, it’s a feast for the
eyes.
But Have You Ever Wondered What The Universe Smelled Like?
It’s a very Jaden Smith question, but a valid one nonetheless.
Well fortunately for us we have sent people into space equipped with the latest in nose
technology and they’ve told us what space smells like.
Now obviously they’re not smelling space while they’re in the middle of spacewalks
because in order to smell, chemicals would have to reach the olfactory sensory neurons
inside their nose.
If they’re smelling the universe from inside their suit, that means space is getting in
and that’s kind of the opposite of what the suit was designed for.
But when they get back inside the airlock and take their helmets off, the star stank
clings to their suits, and there have been a couple different comparisons depending on
who you ask.
NASA’s Kevin Ford said his space walk smelled like nothing he’s smelled before, but he’ll
never forget it.
Don Pettit, an astronaut aboard the ISS, was a little more descriptive and described it
as a sweet, pleasant metallic smell, and it reminded him of his summers spent welding.
Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency says it’s like a mix of walnuts and the
brake pads of his motorbike.
He also described it as a pile of wet clothes after a day in the snow, which sounds drastically
different from his other description.
And space tourist Anousheh Ansari said the smell reminded her of burnt almond cookies.
Apparently space odor is the most nostalgia-inducing thing ever.
So what makes space inter-smeller?
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
They’re rings of hydrogen and carbon that are abundant in the universe and they’re
associated with new stars.
They form easily, can be found on comets and meteorites, are abundant in burned steak,
and they give some nebula their red hue.
It’s estimated 20% of the carbon in the universe is tied up in polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons, and it’s possible they were the seed for life as we know it.
Pretty crazy, right?
Of course if you go elsewhere there may be different smelly smells that smell smelly.
Like on the moon, for example.
Buzz Aldrin compared the smell of moon dust to slightly damp ashes in a fireplace, and
fellow Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt described it as spent gunpowder.
And based on the spectrums we’ve analyzed from the center of our galaxy, the dust cloud
Sagittarius B2 is silly with ethyl formate, meaning it smells like rum.
To me this is only further evidence of space pirates.
Like I said you wouldn’t want to smell space by floating around in it unprotected because
of your imminent death, but it wouldn’t be as quick or horrible as you might think.
Trace covers that down here.
So, any other off-beat questions about space you want us to cover?
Let us know in the comments or find me on twitter @JHug00 and I’ll see you next time
on DNews.