We have invented devices to record what we can see, and devices to record what we can hear.
Why haven’t we invented something to record what we can smell?
How would this work if we did?
\[When I am travelling I really wish I could record the way things smell, because smell is so strongly evocative of memories and sensations.\]
In: Technology
When we were first learning about waves, my high school physics teacher said “the cool thing about sound waves is that you can hear me from the other side of the room without having to smell my stanky breath”
I can hear him from the other side of the room because the sound waves from his voice moves through the air, but his actual breath, the air molecules coming out of his mouth, stay pretty close to him, meaning only the people in the front row must suffer his “stanky breath”
Recording implies identifying every single chemical on a scent profile. And chemical identification is difficult and highly impractical on an individual scale. Also, every scent is not composed of the same chemicals, so “playback” for every “recording” would also be difficult and impractical.
We kinda can? Refer to Chromatography. It’s how jelly belly makes its flavors so accurate! I imagine if we can make vapors into jelly bean flavors, we could make jelly beans into vapors.
Here’s a fun article!
https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/02/jelly-belly-explains-the-process-of-creating-uniquely-flavored-jelly-beans
We can. We do. There’s a [machine](https://www.olorama.com) for that. It’s crazy expensive and the technology only half works.
Technically, we can. We can use sensors to record what aromatic compounds are in the air and in what concentrations. The problem is we have no good way to play that recording back. You would need a bank of hundreds or thousands of chemical samples that you could release in precise increments. That would be theoretically possible to do but practically impossible. A more practical application would be to engineer a fragrance that smells like a particular place or event and bottle it as a perfume or mix it into a candle.
When can recreate smells to some degree.
Some expensive candles recreate the smells of certain places such as Indian flower markets or Cathedrals.
At the other end, scratch’n’sniff stickers recreate simple smells.
I guess some sort of a portable chromatography machine could be made allowing people to capture a smell at anytime and break it down. It could then be recreated later using a form of printer that combined the required chemicals.
The source of a smell will eventually run out.
When we smell something, airborne particles enter our nose, which are then interpreted by the brain. So, what happens to an object that is continuously shedding particles in order for you to smell it? Eventually the source needs to be replenished. You won’t smell like perfume the rest of your life by applying it once. And you can’t perfectly replicate the smell of a perfume without the same mixture of particles.
Sight on the other hand, simply requires a light source (sun, light bulb, fire, etc) to reflect photons off an object into your eyes to be interpreted by the brain. And sound is the vibration of particles entering your ears to be interpreted by the brain, the patterns of which we can replicate by precisely moving the air.
Smell, like taste, cannot be easily replicated because they require very specific particles shedded by the object itself. Light and sound do not originate in such a way to ‘run out’ from the object itself.
Fascinating question! Our sense of smell is incredibly complex, involving a multitude of chemical compounds. Recording it isn’t just about capturing these molecules but replicating them perfectly—and that’s immensely challenging with current technology. But, who knows? The future holds amazing possibilities for sensory experiences beyond imagination. Keep wondering!
We can and do. Anything artificially scented (lotions, air freshener, etc.) is a scent “recording.”
The simple answer is that light and sound are waves. We can measure them and record them easily. They’re just made of vibrations or energy.
Scents are made of things. When you smell something, it’s actually tiny bits of it floating in the air that your nose picks up. Not so easy to record. It’s kind of like asking why can’t we record a house and just play it back. Much more complicated.
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