Scent of space

Heikki Hirvonen sent a link to a FB post about the scent of space (see this). He is the content of the FB post.

"Astronauts say that space smells like gunpowder and burnt steak. It being a vacuum and all, space isn't often thought of as having a scent of its own. And while no one has directly smelled outer space, exposure without a helmet would be fatal. Many astronauts have reported that it smells like a mix of gunpowder and burnt steak. The odor is most noticeable after an astronaut returns to their spacecraft through the airlock and removes their helmet, at which point the lingering scent can be detected by both the astronaut who had been outside the ship and their crewmates who remained aboard.

It has been theorized that the source of space's scent is dying stars, which release molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a chemical compound also found in coal, oil, and food as they near the end of their existence.

There's even a cologne named Eau de Space based on the smell, which was originally synthesized by biochemist Steve Pearce at NASA's behest to better prepare astronauts for every aspect of the job. Based on his interviews with astronauts who had been to space, Pearce described the aroma as hot metal, burnt meat, burnt cakes, spent gunpowder, and welding of metal."

PAHs (polycyclic aromatic compounds) look like a possible explanation. They would produce IR radiation assigned with unidentified infrared bands (UIBs) and since the odour sensation at the fundamental level is based on IR light, UIBs could produce the sensation.

Consider first PAHs. I have considered PAHs several times while developing TGD view of quantum biology.

1. PAHs are obtained by fusing together organic molecules involving aromatic rings and are produced in burning and are often poisonous. The list of the basic properties of PAHs \cite{bbio/PAH,PAH1} (see this) can be found for instance in (see this).

   The properties of PAHs have led to the PAH world hypothesis stating that PAHs are predecessors of the recent basic organic molecules. For instance, the distances of aromatic molecules appearing as basic building bricks are the same as distances of DNA base pairs.

2. So called Unidentified Infrared Bands (UIBs) of radiation around IR energies E ∈ {.11 , .20, .375} eV arriving from the interstellar space are proposed to be produced by PAHs. The UIBs can be mimicked in the laboratory in reactions associated with photosynthesis producing PAHs (see this and this).
3. PAHs are detected in interstellar space. James Webb telescope found that PAHs exist in the very early cosmology 1 billion years before they should be possible in the standard cosmology! Furthermore, PAHs exist in regions, where there are no stars and no star formation (see this).

The interpretation of the findings in the TGD framework is discussed in (see this) and this)!

1. In the TGD framework, a possible explanation would be that the nuclei involved are not produced by hot fusion in stars but by dark fusion occurring at rather low temperatures. PAH world as a predecessor of recent chemical life would have developed in interstellar space.
2. The original TGD inspired proposal was that dark fusion preceded "cold fusion" associated with prestellar objects preceded ordinary nuclear and ignited hot fusion leading to the formation of the stellar core (see this). The numerous anomalies related to the standard model of the Sun assuming that the energy is produced in the core of the Sun suggest that something in the nuclear physics of the Sun is badly misunderstood. The analysis of the anomalies in the TGD framework leads to a rather radical proposal assuming that also the interior of the Sun is at a rather low temperature and dark fusion prevails in this region. The core would be a quantum system analogous to the cell interior or even cell nucleus (see this). Needless to say this would completely change our views about the Sun and of life and consciousness.

   Sun would be in a well-defined sense a living system needing metabolic energy feed. Solar surface would contain a layer producing both solar wind and solar energy and would receive metabolic energy feed from outside, for instance from galactic black holes along monopole flux tubes. This view requires taking seriously the prediction of TGD that ordinary hadron physics is accompanied by several scaled variants of hadron physics. In particular, M₈₉ hadron physics with a mass scale which is 512 times higher than for ordinary hadron physics (see this). The transformation of M₈₉ nuclei to ordinary nuclei would produce solar energy and also provide the Sun itself with metabolic energy.

3. In the TGD framework, this picture suggests that PAHs might have been created as an outcome of dark fusion in interstellar space. PAHs might have made possible a primitive form of metabolism and photosynthesis (see this and this) at relatively low temperatures prevailing in interstellar space. This would have made it possible for plasmoids as primitive life forms to store metabolic energy chemically. The hypothesis about plasmoids as predecessors of the recent chemical life forms in the Earth's ionosphere is discussed in (see this).
4. Dark proton sequences, providing a universal representation of the genetic code, based on a completely unique hyperbolic tessellation known as icosa tetrahedral tessellation (see this), would have realized the genetic code for the plasmoids and the chemical code would have emerged later. Also the recent realization of the genetic code would involve sequences of dark protons, with genetic codons represented as dark protons triplets. The triplets of dark cyclotron photons forming quantal units would induce resonant transitions between the dark codons: 3-resonance would be in question. Genes with N codons would give rise to 3N-resonances and a universal addressing in the communications by dark 3N-photons with the message coded to frequency scale modulation.

This does not yet say anything about how PAHs and UIBs could relate to the scent of space.

1. Luca Turin (see this) discovered that the absorption of infrared light produces odour perception. The earlier view was that a purely chemical mechanism involving the attachment of odorant molecules to the odour receptors is the mechanism of the odour perception. At the basic level the odour sensation would be however produced by infrared light. In particular, space odout might be produced by the infrared light emitted by PAHs. This makes possible remote odour perception.
2. In principle, also the solar radiation at infrared wavelengths could induce the sensation of odour. The odorant molecules could be present in the air inside the helmet. They would be excited by UIB light arriving from interstellar space and emit IR photons as they return to the ground state. This would generate the sensation of the scent of space. In the long run sensory adaptation would lead to the situation in which the scent of space is not perceived anymore. When the astronaut is outside the aircraft sensory adaptation takes care that the sensation is not felt. The sensation is most intense when the helmet is removed after the return to the spacecraft.

Whether the UIBs are produced by ordinary chemical transitions associated with photosynthesis or its predecessor or whether they involve new physics suggested by TGD, is an interesting question to ponder.

1. This relates interestingly also to the Pollack effect, which is most effectively induced by infrared light. Pollack effect is indeed central in the TGD inspired quantum biology and is a non-chemical transition in which photons provide the energy kicking protons to the "magnetic body" of the molecule. It is also essential in photosynthesis and in a temporary non-chemical storage of metabolic energy to the magnetic body of the system.

   In the Pollack effect and its TGD inspired generalizations, the photon would increase the value of effective Planck constant h_eff for the protons. This could make the Compton length of the radiation, emitted as a dark photon as the proton transforms to ordinary proton, very long.

2. Could the large value of h_eff make possible space scent even without the presence of PAHs in the nearby environment? Smell is usually regarded as a sense restricted to rather short scales. Basically it would be infrared vision. Could this make it possible to smell over astrophysical distances?!

   In fact, insects are known to be able to smell over distances measured in tens of kilometers. Could the real reason be that the smell sensation is also now mediated by (dark) infrared photons rather than by diffusing odorant molecules? I learned from my chemist friend that the odour of vanilla cannot be produced artificially. Could one understand this in terms of dark IR photons?

See the article About long range electromagnetic quantum coherence in TGD Universe or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.