> I've always wondered how far off we are from being able to "3D print" tastes and smells. I had a machine learning professor tell me that chemoreception is the only sense that can't be decomposed into "eigensmells" or "eigentastes" - not sure if that still holds true today.
This gets into an interesting and controversial (in that scientists will argue about it) domain.
Smell may be detecting the quantum vibrations of electrons.
This gets into an interesting and controversial (in that scientists will argue about it) domain.
Smell may be detecting the quantum vibrations of electrons.
2011: Flies sniff out heavy hydrogen - https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2011.39
2013: 'Quantum smell' idea gains ground - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21150046
2019: Human smell perception is governed by quantum spin-residual information - https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5121155
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_theory_of_olfaction
And for the other take on it:
2015: What’s that smell? A controversial theory of olfaction deemed implausible - https://theconversation.com/whats-that-smell-a-controversial...
Tangentially to the fly test: 2021: Heavy water tastes sweeter - https://www.pnas.org/post/journal-club/heavy-water-tastes-sw...
> And in a taste test with noses plugged, over half did, suggesting that taste receptors on the tongue were indeed picking up the subtle flavor.