Fakultät für Physik und Astronomie
STEPHEN PHILLIPS hostreviews.co.uk / UNSPLASH

The Chiral Puzzle of Life

Dr. Noemie Globus , University of California, Santa Cruz & University of Prague

While we have not yet reached a consensus on the definition of life, biological homochirality seems to be a necessary step for life?s emergence. The unraveling of its origin requires interdisciplinary research, by exploring each of fundamental physics, modern chemistry, astrophysics, and biology. In this talk, I will focus on the origin of biological homochirality in the context of astrophysics and particle physics. The weak force, one of the fundamental forces operating in nature, is parity-violating, and has been implicated in biological homochirality since over half a century. On Earth, at ground level, most of our cosmic radiation dose comes from polarized muons formed in a decay involving the weak force. Recent ideas connecting the chirality of cosmic muons to a chiral bias in biological processes, and possible routes to detect chirality in astrophysical environments will be discussed. Dr. Globus is hosted by Dr. Christian Fendt, MPIA (fendt@mpia-hd.mpg.de)

Heidelberg Joint Astronomical Colloquium
23 Nov 2021, 16:00
Location not specified.

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