Scientists discover the Seinfeld of scents: It's a smell about nothing

If you've flipped through a SkyMall catalog, you've seen countless white-noise machines for sale, but could "white smell" makers be next? Scientists at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have discovered a new "intermediate" scent that doesn't smell like anything distinct at all. The smell, which researchers compare to the "perceptual hum" of white noise, is called Laurax and was created by combining 30 "differently scented molecules." The molecules themselves didn't matter: The end result always came out to be the indescribable, indistinct scent of Laurax. "The best way to appreciate the qualities of olfactory white is to smell it," researchers wrote. We give it two weeks before there's a Laurax-scented Yankee Candle. [Source]

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