Hey, I'm an undergraduate chemistry major at SUNY Albany in New York. This blog is for anything I find interesting. I have many interests: chemistry, math, philosophy, poetry, libertarianism, etc. I have some hero's who I hope to find on tumblr more often who include: Buckminster Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Carl Jung, Marshall Mcluhan, Kurt Godel, John Muir and more. Any questions about anything, just ask. is called Petrichor, and it is caused by Geosmin.
Geosmin is an organic compound with the formula C12H22O. It’s produced by several classes of microbes, including cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) and actinobacteria (especially Streptomyces), and released when these microbes die. The human nose is extremely sensitive to geosmin and is able to detect it at concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion.
That’s crazy.