The White Noise of Smell

"Scientists have discovered a new smell, but you may have to go to a laboratory to experience it yourself. The smell is dubbed 'olfactory white,' be.comse it is the nasal equivalent of white noise, researchers report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Just as white noise is a mixture of many different sound frequencies and white light is a mixture of many different wavelengths, olfactory white is a mixture of many different smells. In a series of experiments, they exposed participants to dozens of equally mixed smells, and what they discovered is that our brains treat smells as a single unit, not as a mixture of compounds to break down, analyze and put back together again."

Link to slashdot article with tech nerd comments.

Link to Scientific Journal article

Quote from scientific journal article;

The chief finding of this study is [that].. the more components two mixtures have, the more similar they smell, even
though they have no individual components in common. More- over, odorant mixtures with ∼30 components or more begin to
smell alike, having a quality we call “olfactory white.” So why, in the real world, do not large mixtures of many components, such as wine, coffee, and rose, all smell similar and white? The answer to this question reflects two conceptual considerations regarding the perception of complex olfactory objects. The first is that, unlike the olfactory whites we generated, the components of wine, coffee, and rose were not designed to span stimulus space...The second consideration is that,
unlike the olfactory whites we generated, wine, coffee, and rose do not contain components of equal intensity.


A lot of maths used to demonstrate this. It should be noted that strawberry flavour has about 50 different molecules that give it it's unique flavour.

 

Probably why I cant tell much difference between flavourArt black Currant and strawberry.

 

Seems to explain why my farts smell like roses..Whoda thunk hey

 

Also explains why every tobacco flavoured liquid tastes exactly like vomit

 

or you've been vaping Queens Rosewater????

 

I thought that only the Queens farts could smell like roses?
Mine smell of Frangiapani.