Abstract
The discovery of meteoritic alpha-amino acids with significant enantiomeric excesses of the L-form has suggested that some cosmic factors could serve as the initial source for chiral imbalance of organic compounds delivered to the early Earth. The paper reviews major hypothesis considering the influence of chiral irradiation and chiral combinations of physical fields on the possible ways asymmetric synthesis and transformations of organics could take place within the solar system. They could result in a small enantiomeric imbalance of some groups of compounds. More attention is paid to the hypothesis on parity violation of weak interaction that was supposed to cause homochirality of all primary particles and a more significant homochirality of compounds directly synthesized from the latter in a plasma reactor. The first experiment with material synthesized in a plasma torch resulting from a super-high-velocity impact showed formation of alanine with the excess of L-form between 7 and 25%. The supposed conclusion is that L-amino acids could serve as a starting homochiral biomolecular pool for life to emerge all over the Universe.
Highlights
The recently revised estimates of the age of our Earth amount to 4.54 billion years
Among the above several fundamental predictions that follow from the hypothesis on homochirality of elementary particles, one could be put to the test by using already existing experimental techniques
Based on the above reliable and extremely informative experimental findings, one can speculate that many other α-amino acids, including “non-natural” species, will be synthesized everywhere in the universe under conditions of much stronger hypervelocity collisions of cosmic bodies and that all
Summary
The recently revised estimates of the age of our Earth amount to 4.54 billion years. Some 4.3 billion years old rocks already show traces of water withering, implying the existence of oceans and land. Isotopic analysis of some zircon crystals, 4.1 billion years old, reveals carbon-rich inclusions which allow suspecting the existence of primitive organic life at that time. In any case, it did not take long, just a few hundred million years, for life to emerge on the young Earth. It did not take long, just a few hundred million years, for life to emerge on the young Earth This could only be possible if abundant organic matter with a predominant homochirality has been accumulated in its aqueous basins. Numerous laboratory works have been conducted in many countries simulating possible sources of extraterrestrial organic matter, including chiral compounds
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