Related papers: Homochirality: a prerequisite or consequence of li…
In chemistry and biochemistry, chirality represents the structural asymmetry characterized by non-superimposable mirror images for a material like DNA. In physics, however, chirality commonly refers to the spin-momentum locking of a…
Humankind has spread worldwide supported by cultural and technological knowledge, but the environmental sustainability on the human niche evolution depends on a new human beings relationship with the biosphere. Human lifestyles nowadays are…
With the characterisations of potentially habitable planetary atmospheres on the horizon, the search for biosignatures is set to become a major area of research in the coming decades. To understand the atmospheric characteristics that might…
Smectite clays are hydrated layer silicates that, like micas, occur naturally in abundance. Importantly, they have readily modifiable interlayer spaces that provide excellent sites for nanochemistry. Vermiculite is one such smectite clay…
It is sometimes asserted that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. We critically examine the assumptions inherent in this argument. Using a lottery model for biogenesis in the Universe, we…
We briefly review the concept of a parallel `mirror' world which has the same particle physics as the observable world and couples to the latter by gravity and perhaps other very weak forces. The nucleosynthesis bounds demand that the…
The problem of evolutionary complexification of life is considered one of the fundamental aspects in contemporary evolutionary theory. Parasitism is ubiquitous, inevitable, and arises as soon as the first replicators appear, even during the…
In a recent paper [1] Lineweaver and Davis performed a statistical analysis to claim that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth indicates high probability of biogenesis on terrestrial- type planets. We argue that the rapid appearance of life…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
Chirality in shape and motility can evolve rapidly in microbes and cancer cells. To determine how chirality affects cell fitness, we developed a model of chiral growth in compact aggregates such as microbial colonies and solid tumors. Our…
It is shown that several habitability conditions (in fact, at least seven such conditions) appear to be fulfilled automatically by circumbinary planets of main-sequence stars (CBP-MS), whereas on Earth these conditions are fulfilled only by…
I describe a new method of estimating the prevalence of life in the Universe, based on the fact that more chemically complex environments are more rare. The paper makes three main claims: (1) There is a statistically significant (inverse)…
Many of the biological phenomena involve collective dynamics driven by self-propelled motion and nonequilibrium force (i.e., activity) that result in features unexpected from equilibrium physics. On the other hand, biological experiments…
It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the…
We survey some of the philosophical challenges and pitfalls within origins research. Several of these challenges exhibit circularities, paradoxes, or anthropic biases. We present origins approaches in terms of three broad categories:…
We introduce and theoretically analyze the concept of manipulating optical chirality via strong coupling of the optical modes of chiral nanostructures with excitonic transitions in molecular layers or semiconductors. With chirality being…
The evolution of multicellularity was a major transition in the history of life on earth. Conditions under which multicellularity is favored have been studied theoretically and experimentally. But since the construction of a multicellular…
We have investigated the relationship between the morphology of helical particles and the features of the cholesteric (N$^\ast $) phase that they form. Using an Onsager-like theory, applied to systems of hard helices, we show that the…
Experimental mechanisms that yield the growth of homochiral copolymers over their heterochiral counterparts have been advocated by Lahav and co-workers. These chiral amplification mechanisms proceed through racemic {\beta}-sheet-controlled…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…