Scientists invent perfume that smells better as you sweat

Various bottles of perfumes are pictured in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Thursday, July 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Huge news in the sweet-smelling world of perfume: Researchers at Queen's University Belfast say they're developed a perfume that makes you smell better the more you sweat.

Basically, the perfume—a raw scent combined with an odorless ionic liquid—uses a special "delivery system" that releases more of the perfume's fragrance when it encounters moisture.

When skin is dry, the fragrance acts like "a lead weight" so the aroma "can't fly away," researcher Nimal Gunaratne tells the BBC. "Water is like the scissors" that then release the scent.

Remarkably, the fragrance doesn't just overpower the less-pleasing smell of sweat. Stinky "thiol" compounds in sweat are drawn to the ionic liquid, which effectively eliminates their odor.

In a press release, Gunaratne says experts are already brainstorming new products that could take advantage of the technology. "Not only does it have great commercial potential, and could be used in perfumes and cosmetic creams, but it could also be used in others area of science, such as the slow release of certain substances of interest," Gunaratne says, calling the fragrance "an exciting breakthrough." In what can only be described as less-exciting perfume news, Burger King Japan yesterday released a "Flame-Grilled" fragrance, which is apparently supposed to smell like a Whopper.

Instead, it smells "something like the burnt-rubber skidmarks left by a box-fresh-MacBook-carrying courier scooter after it crashed into a bacon salt factory," writes Sam Byford at the Verge, who paid $42 to try it out.

In other words, it's "unspeakably terrible." (You'll soon be able to buy a perfume recreated from a bottle found in a 150-year-old shipwreck.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: New Invention: Perfume That Smells Better as You Sweat