What does the space smell like? The perfume-making astronomer tries to find out

After a long career in creating designer perfumes, Marina Barcenilla decided to turn her nose to the universe.

The fragrance designer studied planetary science at university in 2015. When she realized that she could marry her two passions, she was taking a course in astrochemistry – the chemical composition of outer space.

She told happen Host Neil Coxer.

“One day, I thought: Actually, this molecule I'm working on? I have it in the perfume lab. I imagine this smell? I can actually create it.”

Barcenilla is now a PhD researcher in astronomy from the University of Westminster, London, UK. When she is not exploring the feasibility of life on Martian, she is recreating the smell of space, from the sulphurized stinky scent of Jupiter’s deepest clouds to the spicy alcoholic fist at the center of the Milky Way.

Four of these stellar scents are now available for public sniffing at the London Museum of Natural History, part of the ongoing exhibition: Space: Can life transcend the earth?

“Preservatives”, but do you also like gunpowder?

So what does the space smell like?

“I don't think it smells good overall,” Barcenilla said.

Those who know can prove it. Canadian astronaut Julie Payette returns from the International Space Station Telling CBC News in 2009 The space smells “cold” and “preservative”.

“After six hours after walking in space, I opened the hatch. The entire air lock area was exposed to the space vacuum for all those hours. So when I opened the door, I smelled a little resistant.”

“It’s not a detergent, but definitely like the type of debris in the hospital, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s the smell of space.’ The more I think, I thought, “Wow, that’s nothing that smells because there might be nothing there, not a microorganism or anything.” ”

Meanwhile, Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield said a different description of this, noting in 2013 that he and many people at many other stations reported the smell of “burning steak and gunpowder” was reported in the airlock.

“Not exactly the garden of spring,” He said in a video of the Canadian Space Corporation.

When it comes to the smell of space, it really depends on what you mean, Barcenilla said.

“Most of the space is empty, … it doesn’t really smell,” she said. “But when you get to a specific planet or satellite, or when you go into a molecular cloud, we find high concentrations of different gases and microscopic dust, we can find odorous molecules and compounds.”

Barcenilla said she has created 25 scents since she started doing the work in 2017.

In the museum exhibition, she stirs up the smell of Mars, which is her science major. Titan, a large moon orbiting the Earth's Saturn; Bennu, an asteroid; and Earth were about 350-400 million years ago, when life had just begun.

“The early Earth was a little stinky. It was a combination of light, damp odors, like what you get when it rains, and also the odors you get from various microbial strains,” she said.

“The one smell you get is also a sulphur cabbage smell. It's a little stinky.”

She admits that none of her works themselves can be fact-checked.

“In space, you can't smell, so it's always impossible. We don't have air to breathe, so it's totally impossible,” she said. “But what I'm going to do is reproduce the chemistry we've found everywhere in space.”

“The more it smells, the more people like to smell it”

Barcenilla brings her scent of space to school to teach the kids, and she also has the opportunity to watch the people who interact with them in the museum.

“I always thought people would be a little scared of the stinky smell, but no, that's the best thing,” she said. “The more it smells, the more people they like to smell, the more they laugh, the more questions they ask.”

She said that piqued curiosity was all.

“It's about bringing space closer to Earth, it's about people opening their minds and understanding that everything we have in space is also finally on Earth,” she said.

Like the final boundary, at least from a olfactory point of view, Barcenilla said, there is nothing really strange about it.

Jupiter's inner cloud? Barcenilla told BBC News They are full of ammonia and sulfur, something you might find in fertilizers, and smell like rotten eggs.

The center of our galaxy? There you will find formate, a compound that is usually found in fruits, which may smell at best. Love rumin the worst case, like a nail polish remover.

“We are part of the entire great universe,” Barcenilla said. “There is a fact that we are all stardust. Everything we make of us, everything we smell on Earth, was originally from space.”