On Thu, 10 May 2001, Amara Graps wrote:
> >Interesting. I suspected quartz to be playing that role.
>
> why quartz?
Because it's abiotic, pretty ubiquitous and comes in two chiral flavours,
as macroscopic monocrystals, even. I suspected it could selectively enrich
moieties of one chirality, concentrating them on the surface and allowing
them to react.
> >However, life's chirality can be adequately explained by
> >autoamplification of a rare event.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> A neutron star's synchtron-radiation imposed on the
> molecular cloud out of which our Solar System formed?
>
> (do you find that hypothesis believable?)
Absolutely not, as the enantiomeric excess would be only just a few
percent in best case. "Rare event" being of course emergence of an
autocatalytic set from the random ursoup.
Panspermia would of course remove the need of local emergence, by relying
on an infectious seed meeting favourable conditions on the prebiotic
Earth.
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