What does space smell like?

Rum and raspberries. That’s right. It sounds like a celestial cocktail, or does it not? More than milky, the Milky Way sounds like a sweet cocktail!

Thanks to NASA's Artemis II mission, and its crew's successful recent return to Earth, there is a lot of content about space exploration, astronauts interviews --new and old-- all around social media; and the algorithms are pushing anything space-related right in front of your eyes. In case you were sleeping under a rock and missed it, the Artemis II crew surveyed the lunar South Pole, specifically for identifying potential sites for a permanent lunar outpost. I am not sure if humanity is ready for embarking in such project to build a Moon base, which they want to use it as a stepping stone for future crewed missions to Mars, but that's another story.

For now, let's focus on what space smells like. So, this video (see below) appeared in my YouTube feed, in which Nicole Stott, a retired NASA astronaut, engineer, and aquanaut answers questions from a Honesty Box. For background, during her career, she flown on two expeditions spending over 100 days in space. She launched the STS-128 mission and spent three months living inside the International Space Station.

In the video, Nicole answers questions about space sexism, the ethics of interplanetary travel, the future of humanity, and what space smells like. She said that to her, space smells like something sweet and metallic.

As I was listening to her answers, I recalled that some time ago I read about Dr. Jillian Scudder's research on the chemical composition of galaxies in the nearly universe and I found it fascinating. She is an astrophysicist and author, and said that The Milky Way Smells of Rum and Raspberries, which is the title of one of the books she wrote. Dr. Scudder is also an Associate Professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio

But when did all this sweet space smelly thing started? It's all about science, like all cool things.

It all started back in 2009, when a team of astronomers exploring a giant cloud of gas and dust at the centre of the Milky Way made an unprecedented discovery.

The cloud they were studying was packed full of a chemical known as ethyl formate, which has a couple of intriguing properties: it is responsible for giving raspberries their flavour, and has the smell of rum. Raspberries are sweet so this aligns to the sweet smell recalled by Nicole Stott.

Exploring further, another nearby region is also notable as it is full of ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, the type that is used to make alcoholic beverages. Stott's impression of a sort of metallic smell also aligns with the gas-phase metallicities present in some parts of the galaxy as found in Dr. Scudder's research.

As it turns out, this region in the Milky Way contains enough alcohol to supply every person on planet Earth with 300,000 pints of beer per day for the next billion years.

Now, if you are thinking about the Milky Way as a free booze paradise, hold your horses.

If bottled at the source, the proof for this beer would be very low, with an alcohol content of less than 1%; but, as the cloud also contains plenty of other nasty chemicals, including carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, it would still leave you with quite a headache the next morning.

Totally not worth it. Or, what do think?