• Question: what does space smell like

    Asked by JayDasher to Fran, Peppe, Greg, Petros, Pooja, Rumman on 13 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Petros Papapanagiotou

      Petros Papapanagiotou answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      I have never been to space, so I don’t know! Space is empty, so I think it wouldn’t smell of anything at all!

    • Photo: Fran Zuch

      Fran Zuch answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      That is an interesting question, but as Petros said, space is empty and that makes it difficult for smell or sound to transmit. I guess one could check if there is any research done on Earth regarding vacuums – that is the closest to space.

    • Photo: Greg Chance

      Greg Chance answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      There is no air in space, so there would be nothing to breath in! Space usually consists of absolutely nothing apart from a few hydrogen atoms. So it wouldn’t smell of anything much! Good question though!

    • Photo: Giuseppe Cotugno

      Giuseppe Cotugno answered on 20 Nov 2017:

      As far as I know, a smell is generated by a chemical element, like methane. If this molecule manages to reach your nose, a set of impulses will be generated from the nose back to the brain. Somewhere there the electric signals will be interpreted and in the front of your head you brain will tell you that there is methane around you and you might want to turn off the gas. As everyone else said, you cannot breath in space because there is no oxygen and no nitrogen (there is a variant of it in the Earth’s air) so we cannot say how space smells for us (or for an animal).

      However, there are such things called olfactory sensors (which perceive smells) which function as a nose and are sometimes used to detect landmines in robotics. They are not very advanced, but they have no problem functioning in case of lack of air (as far as I can guess, I haven’t used them myself unfortunately). We could use such a sensor in space to have an idea of how space smells. However we will be unable to have a feeling of how it smells, because, at present, we have no idea of how a smell becomes a feeling in form of flavour (or stink). All those are research problems. Nobody knows how space smells because nobody asked your question before! 🙂

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