Friday FAQ: What is the smell of rain?
Friday FAQ
What is the smell of rain?
Apr 17, 2015
by EarthSky Voices in FAQs » Earth, Human World, Science Wire
Australia’s national science agency – the CSIRO – has come up with some pretty amazing inventions over the past 86 years of research, from polymer banknotes to insect repellent and the world-changing Wi-Fi. But we can also lay claim to something a little more esoteric – we actually invented a whole new word. And no, we’re not talking about one of these new-fangled internet words like “YOLO”, “selfie” or “totes”.
The word is “petrichor,” and it’s used to describe the distinct scent of rain in the air. Or, to be more precise, it’s the name of an oil that’s released from the Earth into the air before rain begins to fall.
This heady smell of oncoming wet weather is something most people are familiar with – in fact, some scientists now suggest that humans inherited an affection for the smell from ancestors who relied on rainy weather for their survival.
_b]Origins
Even the word itself has ancient origins. It’s derived from the Greek “petra” (stone) and “ichor” which, in Greek mythology, is the ethereal blood of the gods.
But the story behind its scientific discovery is a lesser known tale. So, how is it that we came to find this heavenly blood in the stone?
Nature of Argillaceous Odour might be a mouthful, but this was the name of the paper published in the Nature journal of March 7, 1964, by CSIRO scientists Isabel (Joy) Bear and Richard Thomas, that first described petrichor.
More
http://earthsky.org/earth/whats-that-smell-in-the-air-when-its-about-to-rain?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=9ee7cc05c8-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-9ee7cc05c8-393525109
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