The Taste Of Space

It turns out that space tastes like raspberries and not Tang or freeze-dried ice cream as one might suspect. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy were searching for evidence of amino acids in space when they found ethyl formate, the chemical used in to make raspberry flavoring. The astronomers used the IRAM telescope in Spain to analyze electromagnetic radiation emitted by a hot and dense region of Sagittarius B2 that surrounds a newborn star. Astronomer Arnaud Belloche said, "It [ethyl formate] does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries."

Comments

I beg to differ

[DaveV1.0]

Space does not have a taste. Sagittarius B2, however, tastes like raspberries.

Re:I beg to differ

[Rei]

And the moon smells like burnt gunpowder.

Re:I beg to differ

[Taibhsear]

Can vacuum have a smell? Might the lack of any matter provide a certain stimulus to our olfactory receptors? Similarly, might a vacuum have a taste?

Yes. Blood. More specifically, your own.

Re:I beg to differ

[Rei]

Morbo voice: Decompression does not work that way!

If you don't exhale, your lungs burst and rather than blood rushing *out* of your circulatory system, air rushes *in*. Which kills you, of course. If you do exhale, you get to die through a combination of dehydration, freezing, and asphyxiation. Water sublimates in a vacuum. Moisture in your skin, eyes, and mouth goes straight to vapor. The capillaries are permeable, so moisture leaves them too (especially in your lungs), thickening your blood and causing severe acidosis. It also pools under your skin and in the muscles, severely bloating you. Evaporation of water rapidly reduces body temperature (especially on the skin). Nitrogen bubbles up in your bloodstream, a painful condition known as The Bends. Your stomach, bowel, and bladder contents can empty. Seizures occur. At the same time, your lungs work in reverse concerning oxygen -- it leaves your bloodstream. So not only are you not getting new oxygen, but you're losing your existing oxygen. Your brain shuts down in 15-30 seconds. The thickening blood and gas bubbles stop blood flow. You die after a couple minutes.

And... back to the original topic... the freezing of your senses and loss of blood shuts them down.

Re:What's next?

[EdZ]

What, you've never listened to the RF from the surface of the Sun, or a distant pulsar, or Jupiter's electromagnetic field? Or if you want to listen to space Right This Instant, turn your radio (or a TV without channel blanking) to a channel with no broadcast. Behold the CMB.

Re:You can't have your cake and taste it too

[BlitzTech]

Luckily, propyl cyanide is only a health rating of 2 and has an LD50 of 50-100mg/kg. By contrast, potassium cyanide has an LD50 of 6mg/kg, and it is likely that sodium cyanide is close to that value.

Just like you shouldn't think that wood alcohol is a viable substitute for grain alcohol. It sounds like it'd be similar, but 10mL's will make you blind and 30 will kill you.