Feb 22 2008
|
|
Do Aliens Smell Like This Too?
You might recall that Whitley Strieber and others have described their “visitors” as smelling like (if I remember correctly) mold, or a sickly-sweet version thereof, but International Space Station Officer Don Petit says he knows the smell of space itself.
In a blog entry on the NASA site, Petit writes:
Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn’t quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as “tastes like chicken.” The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.
Perhaps the smell is a reaction of the materials with whatever is out there–various radiations, etc–but it’s something to think about when you’re writing your next SciFi masterpiece.
Link via BoingBoing.
This entry was posted
on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 am and is filed under Alien Encounters, Astronomy/Space, Breaking News, Close Encounters, Government Projects, Wake Up Down There. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
del.icio.us Digg Reddit BlinkList Google Ma.gnolia StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Help
- Related News Stories:
- Cosmic Conspiracies »
- Interesting Logo For Private Space Company »
- Mufon Under the Spotlight »
- Flying Saucer Music #7 »
- UFO Witness Dies »
|
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:14 am
Damn, I should have included that aliens even smell like fungi in my cryptobotanical article. I just remember Streiber writing that they smelled a bit like cinammon. I’ll have to find that reference…
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
That’s cool. Never crossed my mind to think what space might smell like.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I was under the impression that the ISS general smell was the same as former MIR’s : sweaty socks.
I also remember that Strieber found the place where they performed their ‘procedure’ to be quite untidy. In fact, in the second book “Tranformation”, when he recalls some sort of trip he had to a place he thought was the visitors’ “planet”, that they took him to an ancient University (over a million years old, they told him) and that it was pretty messy too (‘the schoolars aren’t too with the clenaing’ or something like that was the response they gave him).
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Richelle,
You might be right. In fact, I think you are. I don’t know where I read the “mold” reference, but I thought it was Strieber.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
RPJ,
Learned types are the same all over the universe, apparently. If you have time for spotless cleaning, you have too much time, I say, and probably not much going on upstairs.
No, my place isn’t a pigsty.