Origins of life - A left-handed Solar System?

被引：18

作者：

Chyba, CF

机构：

[1] University of Arizona,the Department of Planetary Sciences

来源：

NATURE | 1997年 / 389卷 / 6648期

关键词：

D O I：

10.1038/38392

中图分类号：

O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];

学科分类号：

07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;

摘要：

Why is life left-handed? Protein amino acids on Earth are almost entirely L-enantiomers, rather than right-handed D-enantiomers. When an excess of L-amino acids was discovered on the Murchison meteorite, it seemed that our chemical bias might have had an extraterrestrial origin; but then questions were raised about contamination of the samples. Now the extraterrestrial nature of this excess has been confirmed, re-igniting speculation that an astrophysical process of some sort decided our chemical handedness.

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页码：234 / 235

页数：2

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