What does space smell like? According to scientist of the Astrophysics and Astrochemistry Lab at NASA Ames Research Center, the final frontier smells a lot like a Nascar race - a bouquet of hot metal, diesel fumes and barbecue. The source? Dying stars, mostly. The by-products of all this rampant combustion are smelly compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
It seems that our solar system is particularly pungent because it is rich in carbon and low in oxygen, and just like a car, if you starve it of oxygen you start to see black soot and get a foul smell. Once you leave our galaxy, the smells can get really interesting. In dark pockets of the universe, molecular clouds full of tiny dust particles host a veritable smorgasbord of odors, from wafts of sweet sugar to the rotten-egg stench of sulfur.
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