Scientists Made a Rosetta’s Comet Perfume, and It Smells Putrid

When the Rosetta spacecraft explored comet 67P (Rosetta's comet) more than two years ago, it was revealed that the comet smelled pretty unpleasant - to say the least. Natural gases inhabiting the comet, such as ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen and cyanide, all of which when combined smell something like sulfur (aka rotten eggs), cat urine, and bitter almonds.

Scientists from the Rosetta mission team came up with the crazy idea of creating a perfume out of that smell. The scientists have teamed up with scent firm The Aroma Company in order to create the perfume.

The scientist behind the idea is Colin Snodgrass, and he wants to put the scent of 67P into postcards so they could be shipped all over the world. This way, humans will be aware of how terrible the solar system can smell.

According to Popular Science, the Rosetta-scented postcards will be distributed at London's Summer Science Exhibition, a science festival put on by The Royal Society and offers free admission.

Not available for the exhibition? Aside from the scientists' description of the comet's scent, a reporter from New Scientist named Jacob Aaron has also experienced taking a whiff of Rosetta's comet, and his description of the experience is definitely worth a read.

He says the Rosetta is "sharp" and "unpleasant." In fact, it is so unpleasant that he said it is akin to a "physical presence" inside his skull.

Apparently, the perfume is simply only a distilled version of the comet's odor.

[They] "picked the things that are the smelliest. If you could smell a comet, this is what you would get, but it would be difficult to actually smell it," says researcher Colin Snodgrass, as published in New Scientist. "If you are standing there without your space suit, you're not going to notice the smell, you're just going to notice the lack of air."