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Comment by meowster | Hacker News Reader

Can't smells be recorded by chemical composition?

20+ years ago, CSI (U.S. TV Show) had an episode where they used a device to identify fragrances; seemed plausible to me.

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CSI is notorious for inventing lots of forensic tools that never have and never will exist. In fact, their portrayal of forensic science has warped public perception enough that it has led to the corruption of actual forensic science, because people find it extremely easy to believe that all of these magical investigative tools actually exist.

A show about actual investigative science would not be exciting to watch though, so they throw shit in like "freeze and enhance" because people love fantasy science. They just don't know enough to know the difference between what's real and what's not.

In the real world, we do have something called an "Electronic Nose", which is essentially what you are describing here. But, if you're actually trying to document the composition of a fragrance, you wouldn't work backwards by analyzing the smell, you would just document the formula you used to create the fragrance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_nose

Ah yes, the "CSI Effect", I forgot about that. Thank you.

Probably, but couldn't there exist a situation where another set of chemicals produced a similar sensation?

There's a starup working on producng a wide variety of odors from a more limited number of ingredients.

Using AI, "naturally".

Let me guess. The start the machine, say the magic incantation "Zoom. Enhance." and the answer pops up in an animated sequence on a 72-inch high-def television screen after showing a brief animation of some kind of chemical process complete with flashing outlines and sound effects.

No.

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