Related papers: Recent Progress in Chirality Research Using Circul…
One of the longest standing open problems in science is how life arises from non-living matter. If it is possible to measure this transition in the lab, then it might be possible to understand the physical mechanisms by which the emergence…
The selection of a single molecular handedness, or homochirality across all living matter, is a mystery in the origin of life. Frank's seminal model showed in the fifties how chiral symmetry breaking can occur in non-equilibrium chemical…
Molecular chirality is critical to biochemical function, but it is unknown when chiral selectivity first became important in the evolutionary transition from geochemistry to biochemistry during the emergence of life. Here, we identify key…
The occurrence of biological homochirality is attributed to symmetry breaking mechanisms which are still debatable1. Studies of symmetry breaking require tools for monitoring the population ratios of individual chiral nano-objects, such as…
Chirality, a pervasive phenomenon in nature, is widely studied across diverse fields including the origins of life, chemical catalysis, drug discovery, and physical optoelectronics. The investigations of natural chiral materials have been…
The polarization of light is a critically under-utilized, rich source of information in astronomy. For stars in particular, surface magnetism polarization that can be detected and measured with spectro-polarimetry. Many questions about…
The emergence and spreading of chirality on the early Earth is considered by studying a set of reaction-diffusion equations based on a polymerization model. It is found that effective mixing of the early oceans is necessary to reach the…
The path toward the emergence of life in our biosphere involved several key events allowing for the persistence, reproduction and evolution of molecular systems. All these processes took place in a given environmental context and required…
The article seeks to formulate a synergetic law that is posited to be of common physicochemical and biological nature: an evolving system, possessing free energy and elements with chiral asymmetry may change the type of symmetry inside one…
In condensed matter physics, a broad spectrum of physical characteristics, such as chirality, axiality, and polarity, arises as a direct consequence of the underlying symmetry of the system. We here theoretically investigate the effective…
Chirality is a fundamental feature in all domains of nature, ranging from particle physics over electromagnetism to chemistry and biology. Chiral objects lack a mirror plane and inversion symmetry and therefore cannot be spatially aligned…
Most animal body plans have some degree of left-right asymmetry. This chirality at the tissue and organ level is often assumed to originate from the intrinsic handedness of biological molecules. How this handedness might be transferred from…
Chirality is a fundamental concept in physics that underpins various phenomena in nonlinear optics, quantum physics, and topological photonics. Although the spin of a photon naturally brings chirality, orbital angular momentum can also…
Life is homochiral and homochirality is a fundamental feature of living systems on Earth. While the exact mechanism that led to homochirality is still not fully understood, any realistic scenario on the origins of life needs to address the…
The emergence of biomolecular homochirality is a critically important question about life phenomenon and the origins of life. In a previous paper (arXiv:1309.1229), I tentatively put forward a new hypothesis that the emergence of a single…
Biological molecules chose one of two structurally, chiral systems which are related by reflection in a mirror. It is proposed that this choice was made, causally, by magnetically polarized and physically chiral cosmic-rays, which are known…
Our Earth, being the only living planet that we know, provides us with clues that photosynthetic life-forms may be dominant on other exoplanets for billions of years. Spectropolarimetric signatures of the terrestrial photosynthetic life…
The homochirality of biomolecules remains one of the outstanding puzzles concerning the beginning of life. Chiral amplification of a randomly perturbed racemic mixture of chiral molecules is a well-accepted prerequisite for all routes to…
The circular polarization of light that planets reflect is often neglected because it is very small compared to the linear polarization. It could, however, provide information on a planet's atmosphere and surface, and on the presence of…
Chirality is considered by many scientists to be mainly a geometric concept. There exists also a physical aspect of chirality which is largely being overlooked at. Two examples of mechanical devices are introduced here that represent…