4 ms·

What about Mirror Life? These wrong-handed molecules would be transparent to all existing life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_life https://en.m.wikiped

What about Mirror Life? These wrong-handed molecules would be transparent to all existing life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_life

hannasanarion 6y ago
Proteins, DNA, and other life structures could be mirrored, but sunlight, minerals, water, and acids can't, and right-handed life has already monopolized them.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  i think they can all be mirrored, naturally (light or water isn't chiral). none of them exists in one form more than the other
  - cma 6y ago
    Not without exploding with contact with the non-antimatter.
  - mrfox321 6y ago
    Light can be chiral (circular polarization).
    - chopin 6y ago
      Light is always chiral (spin).
    - chopin 6y ago
      Fun fact: chiral molecules affect left and right circular polarized light differently.
  - ajnin 6y ago
    Not everything is chiral, for example take the mirror image of a water molecule : it's the same thing.
gus_massa 6y ago
"Transparent" is an exaggeration. If the mirror components were abundant, some bacteria would have learn to eat it, and we would have a chiral war. (Perhaps this happened, and we won!) For example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid > These are all L-stereoisomers ("left-handed" isomers), although a few D-amino acids ("right-handed") occur in bacterial envelopes, as a neuromodulator (D-serine), and in some antibiotics. > Although D-isomers are uncommon in live organisms, gramicidin is a polypeptide made up from mixture of D- and L-amino acids. Other compounds containing D-amino acids are tyrocidine and valinomycin. Some bacteria can produce the D- version of the amino acids, and use them in peptides that are natural antibiotics because other bacteria don't know how to destroy them. (Anyway, some other bacteria can are resistant, because they developed a way to destroy them.)

What about Mirror Life? These wrong-handed molecules would be transparent to all existing life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_life https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_life

hannasanarion 6y ago

Proteins, DNA, and other life structures could be mirrored, but sunlight, minerals, water, and acids can't, and right-handed life has already monopolized them.

cblconfederate 6y ago
i think they can all be mirrored, naturally (light or water isn't chiral). none of them exists in one form more than the other
- cma 6y ago
  Not without exploding with contact with the non-antimatter.
- mrfox321 6y ago
  Light can be chiral (circular polarization).
  - chopin 6y ago
    Light is always chiral (spin).
  - chopin 6y ago
    Fun fact: chiral molecules affect left and right circular polarized light differently.
- ajnin 6y ago
  Not everything is chiral, for example take the mirror image of a water molecule : it's the same thing.

gus_massa 6y ago

"Transparent" is an exaggeration. If the mirror components were abundant, some bacteria would have learn to eat it, and we would have a chiral war. (Perhaps this happened, and we won!) For example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid > These are all L-stereoisomers ("left-handed" isomers), although a few D-amino acids ("right-handed") occur in bacterial envelopes, as a neuromodulator (D-serine), and in some antibiotics. > Although D-isomers are uncommon in live organisms, gramicidin is a polypeptide made up from mixture of D- and L-amino acids. Other compounds containing D-amino acids are tyrocidine and valinomycin. Some bacteria can produce the D- version of the amino acids, and use them in peptides that are natural antibiotics because other bacteria don't know how to destroy them. (Anyway, some other bacteria can are resistant, because they developed a way to destroy them.)