Scientists made a fascinating discovery about our sense of smell. They found that the human nose can distinguish over one trillion different odors, which is much more than the previous estimate of 10,000 scents. To figure this out, they did experiments where people had to identify distinct smells from mixtures.
When the scents were very similar, most people had a hard time telling them apart.This discovery excites researchers like Donald Wilson, who hopes it will help them understand how the nose and brain work together to process smells.
However, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this process, like how the number of scent receptors in our nose (around 400 types) affects our ability to detect smells. Some scientists think that more receptors mean a more sensitive sense of smell.Categorizing smells also poses challenges because the relationship between different scent categories isn’t clear.
Unlike colors or sounds, which follow a clear pattern, odors don’t have an easy way to be compared objectively. That’s why it’s difficult to say which complex scents, like colognes or fragrances, are truly different from each other.
