New sniff study reveals humans can detect more than 1 trillion scents

A new study has calculated that human sense of smell can distinguish more than 1 trillion odor mixtures.

The experiment led by Andreas Keller, of Rockefeller's Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior has revealed that there is more sensitivity in the human sense of smell than what previous smell studies have estimated.

Leslie Vosshall, Robert Chemers Neustein Professor and head of the laboratory, who had earlier studied the sense of smell and had placed 10,000 as the number of odors that humans can detect, said, "Everyone in the field had the general sense that this number was ludicrously small, but Andreas was the first to put the number to a real scientific test".

Keller said that the results of this study are a step toward an elusive quantitative science of odor perception that can help drive further research.

The study was published in Science journal.