This morning the South Bronx smells like summer. There is a perfume in the air— a sigh of the earth, the smell of mosses life. Birds are making a huge racket— blossoms dance their way down from the trees. I didn’t need a coat today! Today is a great day to find a queen ant!
It’s incredible to me that there is no way as of yet to scan the air and identify smells. I wish I could pinpoint, name the elements of this smell of summer— all I want is a universal identifier for millions of chemicals!
@futurebird
Gas-chromatography-mass-spectrometry is what you're looking for. Unfortunately it's not really portable yet, but it does the job you're asking for and we're maybe getting pretty close to portable.