Slashdot Mirror
Outer Space has a Smell
repapetilto writes "ISS Science Officer Don Pettit reports in his journal that outer space gives off a smell best described as "a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation." Kind of odd considering smell is supposed to be due to volatilized chemical compounds."
Too bad the vacuum of space will suck that smell right out of your nose.
When I was a teenager I read a lot of short stories. Especially all the sci-fi & horror ones like Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick or Stephen King. I don't recall which one it was but a character had a train set that had a short in it on the tracks. The arcing electricity would give off this same smell. I learned through this short story that this is an incidental way to produce ozone (O3), a greenhouse gas. And that the smell is in fact a low amount of ozone. Perhaps you've detected it at the dentists office or while operating an engine? From the Wikipedia entry: Ozone may be formed from O2 by electrical discharges and by action of high energy electromagnetic radiation. Certain electrical equipment generate significant levels of ozone. This is especially true of devices using high voltages, such as ionic air purifiers, laser printers, photocopiers, and arc welders. Electric motors using brushes can generate ozone from repeated sparking inside the unit. Large motors that use brushes, such as those used by elevators or hydraulic pumps, will generate more ozone than smaller motors. I hope he doesn't write himself off as crazy if he did detect ozone. Or at least investigate where it could have come from. If there's tiny molecules of ozone floating around in orbit of the earth, I'm certain that would be scientifically interesting. Perhaps he should test the properties of these materials when exposed to ozone, do they attract the molecules? Or perhaps he should put the materials in a vacuum here on earth for a bit and then pull them out and see if he detects the same smell?
The human nose can be an extremely strong tool for some individuals, perhaps this is more than just psychosomatic? It would drive me crazy to never investigate this if I were in his shoes. It may seem trivial but sometimes a peculiar notion is what drives scientists make a novel discovery
My work here is dung.
Professor Farnsworth already proved it with the Smell-O-Scope.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
Perhaps he was implying that the OP's brain was more empty than the vastness of space
which is totally what she said
Kirk: "How close will we come to the closest Klingon outpost if we continue on our present course."
Chekov: "One parsec sir. Close enough to smell them."
Spock: "That is illogical, ensign. Oders cannot travel through the vacuum of space."
http://www.badmovies.org/tvshows/startrek/tribbles/tribbles1.wav (135 KB)
The guy is one of the 0.001% that actually WORKS IN FREAKING SPACE. He's obviously qualified to do what he does. He wrote an innocuous little blog entry about some funny little thought that crossed his mind in the middle of WORKING IN FREAKING SPACE. It's not scientific, it's not meant to be something you reference in your term paper on "Olfactory Sensations in Vacuum or Near-Vacuum Conditions", it's not being submitted as proof that NASA needs more funding. It just is what it is.
Someone else said this wasn't "worthy" of Slashdot. Maybe that's true but it doesn't make it stupid. It's just one of those millions of things that doesn't require enormous analysis. Blame whoever submitted it and gave it the headline.