A left-handed Solar System?

Christopher F. Chyba
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Christopher F. Chyba: University of Arizona

Nature, 1997, vol. 389, issue 6648, 234-235

Abstract: Why is life left-handed? Protein amino acids on Earth are almost entirely L-enantiomers, rather than right-handed D-enantiomers. When an excess of L-amino acids was discovered on the Murchison meteorite, it seemed that our chemical bias might have had an extraterrestrial origin; but then questions were raised about contamination of the samples. Now the extraterrestrial nature of this excess has been confirmed, re-igniting speculation that an astrophysical process of some sort decided our chemical handedness.

Date: 1997
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DOI: 10.1038/38392

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