Moon Child

Astronomers hunting amino acids at the centre of the galaxy found ethyl formate instead.

Ethyl formate is partly responsible for the flavour of a ripe raspberry, and there it was in a star-forming cloud in the middle of the Milky Way. The berry is in there as a reminder that everything in the universe is connected: people are made of star stuff, and stars are made of raspberries. Stargazer lily balances the cosmic frost. Among the warmest and spiciest florals there are, its almost fuchsia petals repeat the raspberry's colour.

Nos Republic grew out of an eponymous blog, Ksenia Golovanova's first Telegram channel on the subject. The name comes from res publica, a public affair, and rests on the idea that smell is the rawest and least filtered sensation available, and therefore the one that levels people from very different countries and cultures.

The stories start in Golovanova's own culture and are built to carry past it: the longing for space, or a city seen at night from the top of a tall building. Seven releases now, each credited on its own page to the person who made it, Stéphanie Bakouche on four of them and Cristiano Canali, Valery Mikhalitsyn and Maria Golovina on one each. On several products Golovanova signs a material story herself and leaves the rest to the maker.