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Has there ever been any sort of even-remotely-successful smell-o-vision? We can recreate input for many of our other senses - music, visuals, touch - so why not
by squigz 1y ago
Has there ever been any sort of even-remotely-successful smell-o-vision? We can recreate input for many of our other senses - music, visuals, touch - so why not smell?
- nativeit 1y agoPresumably the volatility inherent to “volatile chemicals” makes it challenging to reproduce on-demand. I’d imagine you’d need something like dozens of base compounds, alcohols and acids to create esters and carrier media, some way of protecting all of it from oxygen, a hyper-accurate mixing device that can then by hyper-cleaned between each scent, since our noses would be too sensitive to allow even a small amount of cross-contamination…and then, why stop at smell? You basically already have everything you need for taste as well. Insert some lab-grown tissues and/or fibers, and we’ve invented the Star Trek replicator!
- refurb 1y agoBack in the 1980s, there was a movie that was released where you could purchase a scratch and sniff card. It was dubbed “Odorama” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester_(film) As the movie played, a number would flash on the screen, you’d scratch that number and smell the spot on the card.
- estimator7292 1y agoIsh. Our level of technology is limited to mixing a small set of base compounds on demand. That gives a range of possible scents about as small as you'd think. The problem is that your sense of smell is a complex chemical detector. There are a lot of unique molecules that you can detect. We'd have to synthesize molecules on demand to get any reasonable range of scents, basically.