Figure 2: Evolution of homochirality in an amino-acid derivative directed by an unknown chiral photoproduct. The chiral photoproduct (R * — produced by the sequence in Fig. 1) is thought to inhibit ...

A research team in Japan has performed deep imaging linear and circular polarimetry of the 'Cat's Paw Nebula' (NGC 6334) located in the constellation Scorpius, successfully detecting high degrees of ...

The phenomenon of asymmetric autocatalysis underpins one of the most fascinating questions in modern chemical and biological sciences: the origin of biological homochirality. In these reactions, a ...

A chemical reaction that demonstrates how key molecules in the biological world might have come to be predominately left or right handed has been reported by scientists at Imperial College London. A ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Molecules often have a structural asymmetry called chirality, which means they can appear in alternative, mirror-image versions, akin to the left and right versions of human hands. One of ...

The word chirality comes from the Greek χǫιρ, which means hand. Chiral molecules form a pair of molecules that are each other's mirror images, similarly to our left and right hands. The chirality of ...

Osaka, Japan－Researchers at The University of Osaka have discovered a new type of chiral symmetry breaking (CSB) in an organic crystalline compound. This phenomenon, involving a solid-state structural ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1848, when Louis Pasteur was a young chemist still years away from discovering how to sterilize milk, he discovered something ...

A chemical reaction that demonstrates how key molecules in the biological world might have come to be predominately left or right handed has been reported by scientists at Imperial College London.

Using some of the world’s most sophisticated telescopes, a pair of astronomers has discovered a first-of-its-kind organic molecule in an enormous star-forming cloud thousands of light years away. And ...