Word: vapor
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...long been known that many gases and vapors transparent to visible light absorb certain wavelengths of infra-red This fact is used industrially in identifying gases; chemists shoot infra-red rays through a vapor and note what wavelengths are absorbed, and how strongly. Why, reasoned Beck & Miles, should the numan nose not do the same...
...which are normally cooler than they are. Therefore the cells radiate heat waves across the air stream. Beck & Miles theorized that when pure air is passing through the nostrils, the cells give no signal; they are getting rid of their heat at the standard rate. But when an odorous vapor is present in the air stream it absorbs certain wavelengths of the heat which the cells are radiating. The cells can feel the change and the stimulus produces a sensation of smell...
Cockroach Teaser. To check the theory Beck & Miles started with cockroaches, which wear their smellers conveniently on their antennae outside their bodies. They put oil of cloves vapor (attractive to cockroaches) behind a gas-tight window of material transparent to infrared. The cockroaches responded to it just about as strongly as if the barrier were not there. When a thin sheet of glass (opaque to infrared) was added to the barrier, the cockroaches showed no more interest in the window than when there was no oil of cloves behind...
Next, the two Yale researchers tried bees, which have much more complex reactions. The bees acted like the cockroaches, crawling frustrated outside a heat-transparent window with sweet-smelling honey vapor behind it. Apparently both cockroaches and bees could smell vapors at a distance from their antennae. This may explain how certain creatures, such as male moths seeking their females, seem able to detect odors far downwind...
...Vapor Blends. Human beings are harder to test. Their smelling apparatus is deeply buried in the upper nasal passages, where it cannot be blocked off from the vapors by heat-transparent barriers. Beck & Miles hope to lick this problem somehow when they get an infra-red spectrometer for studying the wavelength of fragrances...