smell
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We May Soon Have A Colour Wheel For Smell
Whenever you say a colour name, you’re referring to specific properties of light waves. Sounds work the same way, but with properties of compression waves. But what about smell? With all of the different scented chemicals out there and their complex interactions, it’s been impossible to create a simple scale to describe the odours or…
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How The Science Of Smell Is Changing Modern Warfare
The sensory chaos of battle has always posed a challenge to armies hoping to prepare for — and recover from — war. And while it’s clear to most people how sight and sound factor into a soldier’s experience and memory of battle, the smells of combat were, for most of history, largely ignored.
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What A Comet Smells Like (Spoiler: Real Bad)
Now we’ve gotten closer than ever to a comet in space, we can start answering serous scientific questions, like… err, what such a thing smells like?
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Your Nose Is A Super-Machine That Can Detect Over A Trillion Scents
For nearly a century, scientists assumed the human nose was capable of discerning about 10,000 different odours. Turns out, that number was missing a whole bunch of zeroes — new research shows that the human nose can detect over 1,000,000,000,000 distinct scents. Tell your dog to quit being so smug.