smell

A Dog With Dumbo-Sized Ears

Harbor is an 8-year old Black and Tan Coonhound with big ears. His ears are so big, he now holds the Guinness World record for the Longest Ears on a Living Dog. This particular breed of dog is known for its larger ears, but Harbor’s ears are off the chart. His left ear measures 12.25…

Tech News Kelly

How the World Looks Through the Noses and Muzzles and Radar of Critters

Ever wonder how your dog’s sense of smell is so sensitive that he knows you’re coming from a mile away, but he still loves to roll around in rotting dead carcasses? Or were you ever curious about what the world looks like to a bumblebee, or a turtle? If you answered yes to any of…

Biology Kristen Philipkoski

What is the speed of smell?

The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second. The speed of sound is 761.2 miles per hour. That takes care of vision and hearing, but what about our other senses? Shouldn’t there be a speed of smell? At first glance, it seems like there really ought to be. After all, smell isn’t like taste…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

The Aroma Lid Makes Your Coffee Smell and Taste Great

Coffee from your favorite donut shop has a problem. It doesn’t taste as good as it should because the lid traps in the wonderful aroma. Taste is 95% smell, so you’re really missing out. Mint Urban Technologies has a solution for this sensory shortcoming. It’s designed the Aroma Lid, a new cover that’s infused with…

Tech News Kelly

Black widow spiders avoid cannibalization by sniffing webs

The black widow spider practices sexual cannibalism, in which the female eats the male after mating – indeed, that’s why they’re called black widows in the first place. But males have an unexpected way of avoiding that fate. The secret of male survival is to know just how hungry their potential mate is. That may…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Why global warming will make the world smellier

It’s hard to know where to begin when calculating the effects that climate change might have on our planet, but I’m guessing most people haven’t considered the smell factor. Global warming could super-charge the production of a particularly smelly gas. The problem starts in the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica. That’s the natural habitat of…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Scientists Might Finally Get Smell-O-Vision Right

How would you like it if your TV could fart? It sounds absurd, but that’s what’s on the table with Samsung’s latest revival of the Smell-O-Vision concept. And this time the tech looks real enough that it might actually happen. Researchers at UCSD are partnering with Samsung to create a compact device for your TV…

Television Kyle Wagner

Would You Give Up Your Sense of Smell Before You Gave Up Tech?

In a survey of 7,000 16-to-30-year-olds, a not-entirely-surprising 53 percent chose tech over their sense of smell. Most of us here at Giz picked tech, since we’d obviously be massively unemployed without it. When we put the question to you on Twitter, most of you agreed with us, though our readers might not be the…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

The most disgusting flower in the world is about to bloom

The amorphophallus titanum has perhaps the least charming nickname of any flower: it’s known as the corpse flower because it smells like rotting flesh. And yet its latest bloom this weekend is expected to bring over 10,000 eager admirers. It’s a generally remarkable flower, standing well over six feet tall, and this particular one has…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

The weird connection between pain and smell – and how people lose both

It’s been known for some time that certain people are physically unable to feel pain. A new test shows that those people are also unable to smell any scents. The SCN9A gene is the helpful little guy that tells people when they sit on a tack, or when the water in the bathtub is too…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Smelling bad actually makes you look uglier

Relative to pretty much any other mammal, humans have an absolutely atrocious sense of smell. But even our weakest sense is powerful enough to affect how we think…starting, of course, with how attractive other people look. Oxford researchers probed the hitherto mystical connection between smell and human hotness back in 2007. The experiment itself was…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

The truth about why things smell bad: Vibrating molecules

For over a century, our sense of smell has been explained with the “lock and key” hypothesis, which holds that each odor molecule has a particular shape that allows it to fit into particular smell receptors in the nose. But now a controversial study involving fruit flies suggests that hypothesis might miss the truth entirely…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Cinnamon is scientifically proven to be the most Christmas-y smell in the world

Which smells make people think about summer, and which evoke thoughts of the holidays? A hundred people were locked in a science museum and asked to smell a dozen different odors in order to answer this vital question. The subjects were first asked, without being given anything to smell, which odors they thought were most…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Science proves a rose by any other name doesn’t smell as sweet

Shakespeare might be the greatest writer in the history of the English language, but he was no experimental psychologist. Giving odors positive or negative names actually has a major effect on how how we perceive them. Of course, scientists weren’t musing over the impossibility of love between two warring noble houses from Verona. Instead, they…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

You Can Scratch And Sniff The Moon

This is a scratch and sniff print that resembles the smell of the moon. So what does it smell like? According to Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, like gunpowder. In 1972 Duke said, about the moon’s smell: It is really a strong smell. It has that taste—to me, gunpowder—and the smell of gunpowder, too. The…

Space & Spaceflight Casey Chan

The Origins of That New Gadget Smell

Recently I found myself asking someone why the hell his company’s new product stinks so much that I want to leap out of my second floor window. Insulted by my question or not, he explained that new gadget smell. The product was a funky iPad stand/case and despite my desire to try it out right…

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Biologists reveal why mosquito repellent DEET is doomed to fail

Everyone’s favorite mosquito repellent, DEET, works by making a smell that mosquitoes can’t stand, or by blocking their ability to smell humans, depending on who you ask. But even the greatest repellents won’t stop all mosquitoes. New evidence suggests why. It turns out that the Anopheles gambiae have a second family of olfactory sensors, previously…

io9 Tim Barribeau

Frog Cells Give Artificial Noses the Power of Super Smell

How do you give a robot a sharper sense of smell? By using genetically modified frog cells, according to Shoji Takeuchi, a bioengineer at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Today’s electronic noses are not up to the job, he says. Although e-noses have been around for a while – and are used to sniff…

Tech News Paul Marks - New Scientist

Computer Supermaterial Could Stop Your Shoes Smelling

Graphene has been heralded as the new supermaterial of our time. It possesses incredible strength and elasticity, while its exceptionally high conductivity and use in flexible semiconductors could soup up computing. If all that weren’t enough, there’s another way that the atom-thick layers of carbon might improve your life: stopping your shoes from smelling. Sheets…

Tech News Kat Hannaford

Scenter Smell Memory System Is Bound to Be Misused

I love Scenter, a system that allows you to bring back memories using smells, which is a more evocative agent than sight or sound. There are only two problems with this. First, how the hell could we capture scents from moment in those capsules? Second, that nozzle’s shape disturbs me. [Studio KG]

Tech News Jesus Diaz

A Dog With Dumbo-Sized Ears

How the World Looks Through the Noses and Muzzles and Radar of Critters

What is the speed of smell?

The Aroma Lid Makes Your Coffee Smell and Taste Great

Black widow spiders avoid cannibalization by sniffing webs

Why global warming will make the world smellier

Scientists Might Finally Get Smell-O-Vision Right

Would You Give Up Your Sense of Smell Before You Gave Up Tech?

The most disgusting flower in the world is about to bloom

The weird connection between pain and smell – and how people lose both

Smelling bad actually makes you look uglier

The truth about why things smell bad: Vibrating molecules

Cinnamon is scientifically proven to be the most Christmas-y smell in the world

Science proves a rose by any other name doesn’t smell as sweet

You Can Scratch And Sniff The Moon

The Origins of That New Gadget Smell

Biologists reveal why mosquito repellent DEET is doomed to fail

Frog Cells Give Artificial Noses the Power of Super Smell

Computer Supermaterial Could Stop Your Shoes Smelling

Scenter Smell Memory System Is Bound to Be Misused

Trump Says He’ll Sign Order to Pay TSA

Deadpool Will Deface ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Classics for a New Secret Lair

Apple’s Siri Isn’t Just Going to Use One Chatbot. It’s Going to Use All of Them

Why ‘For All Mankind’ Season 5 Is the Key to the Rest of the Series

ASUS ZenScreen 15.6-Inch Portable Monitor Is Now Cheaper Than Black Friday in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale

Early Wildfires Are Surging Across the US—and Trump’s New Fire Agency Isn’t Ready

INIU Brings Another Power Bank to the Spring Sale as SnapGo Keychain Portable Charger Drops to Its Lowest Price

Attorney Hit With Historic Fine for Citing AI-Generated Cases

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

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