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.

Add to calendar Add to calendar
Today:
There are no scheduled talks today.
Upcoming:
Redefining genomic medicine for neglected rare disease populations
Richard Horgan
Mon, 29 Jul 2024, 10:00
CMB hotspots from tachyonic instability of the Higgs potential
Julia Ziegler
Tue, 30 Jul 2024, 14:15
Optimal compression and inference from the cosmic 21-cm signal
David Prelogovic
Wed, 31 Jul 2024, 11:00
The LHCb SciFi Tracker - Assembly, Commissioning & First Data Taking
Lukas Witola
Wed, 31 Jul 2024, 15:15
TBD
Nadiia Kallweit-Pulatova
Thu, 1 Aug 2024, 11:00