Is there anything that is truly odorless?
Inert gases. maybe?
Carbon monoxide
Water is “supposed” to be tasteless, colorless and odorless.
Oxygen
Interstellar space perhaps.
Methane/Natural Gas. Household gas actually adds a smelly chemical so you can notice when there’s a gas leak. As for farts, they smell because of decaying bacteria & other icky stuff; the gas itself is odorless.
There’s actually tons of compounds & chemicals which are technically odorless, since our sniffers haven’t evolved to detect them.
ozone, 3 oxygen atoms, has a distinct odor.
carbon monoxide is odorless as mentioned, which makes it very deadly. having a detector is good safety.
Not to horses.
I know there are things said to be odorless, but are they really? Odorless to us, but are they odorless to every animal? Could they be generating an odor that we just can’t detect?
This is sort of a “If a tree falls in the forest…” type of question.
Yes, to horses.
You sure about that? I’ve always heard that horses can smell water whereas humans can’t. A’Googlin’ I shall go…
Seems to me any number of solids are odorless. Can anyone smell, say, steel? Is it even possible for molecules from it to become airborne and reach one’s receptors (assuming it’s still solid)?
While naturally occurring water (with minerals) may have an odor detectable by horses or dogs or some such, though imperceptible to humans, can any creature smell distilled water?
Iocne powder. I’m sure of it.
Iocane
Iron has a smell* so I’d guess that steel with enough iron in it would smell as well. Granted, I’m not saying it has a strong smell, but if you put your nose right up to it iron is what most people are thinking of when they say something smells or tastes metallic.
Horses cannot detect distilled water, but they can smell the vegatation aromas that occurs on the banks of natural waterways. Similarly, ancient mariners in sailing vessels could smell "land ". Which means they could smell the aroma of land-based life.
Every emanation into the atmosphere has an “odor”. in that it is chemically different from others and can potentially be detected, but there may be some that are not detectable to any known evolved organism.
Nitrogen. It’s around 80% of the air you breathe.
That was going to be my first response, then I got side tracked on the wiki page looking at this picture (while checking the spelling for Mercaptan) and happened to notice that it says that Natural Gas is almost totally odorless, so I left it off.
I’d bet your life on it.
(and its “Iocane”)