Have you ever smelled the surface of the sun, the inside of a space station, or a medieval doctor’s first aid kit for plague victims? Now you can.
Some smells are so familiar: chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. The sweet perfume of a lilac bouquet. The always-welcome aroma of your morning cappuccino.
But there are other odors that you may not know quite so well. For instance, have you ever smelled the surface of the sun, the inside of a space station, or a medieval doctor’s first aid kit for plague victims?
Well, for a limited time, you can, thanks to the curators of curious odors at England’s University of Sunderland, who’ve created a new exhibition dedicated to “extinct and impossible smells.”
“What we have created here is a world first, a scientific flight of fancy made up of exotic and strange scents,” Sunderland professor Robert Blackson, who came up with the idea, told The Telegraph. “One person will love a smell when their friend will hate it,” he said. “There are no good or bad smells.”
The exhibit’s attractions range from Cleopatra’s incense-scented shampoo to the perfume of flowers that have been extinct for hundreds of years. “Resurrecting the scent of an extinct plant may seem like something straight out of ‘Jurassic Park’, but the dynamics of the operation are relatively simple,” said Blackson.