Monday, October 12, 2020

The nature of chirality

Recommendable! Fascinating chirality! Nice overview of the riddles of chirality on earth and in the universe we live in! Understanding chirality is probably one of the fundamental issues of science.

"... the weak nuclear force only interacts with left-handed particles ... Why that might be is one of the big questions in physics ...
the preferred handedness in biomolecules ... right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids ...
The spin of a right-chiral particle points along the particle’s direction of motion, while the spin of a left-chiral particle points opposite to the particle’s direction of motion. ...
A chiral twin has been found for every matter and antimatter particle in the Standard Model—with the exception of neutrinos. ..."

Nature through the looking glass | symmetry magazine Handedness—and the related concept of chirality—are double-sided ways of understanding how matter breaks symmetries.

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