Stardust, Supernovae and the Molecules of Life
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 13,45 MB
Release : 2011-12-15
Category :
ISBN : 9781461413332
Stardust, Supernovae and the Molecules of Life
Author : Richard Boyd
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 27,88 MB
Release : 2011-12-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 146141332X
Book Description
Where were the amino acids, the molecules of life, created: perhaps in a lightning storm in the early Earth, or perhaps elsewhere in the cosmos? This book argues that at least some of them must have been produced in the cosmos, and that the fact that the Earthly amino acids have a specific handedness provides an important clue for that explanation. The book discusses several models that purport to explain the handedness, ultimately proposing a new explanation that involves cosmic processing of the amino acids produced in space. The book provides a tour for laypersons that includes a definition of life, the Big Bang, stellar nucleosynthesis, the electromagnetic spectrum, molecules, and supernovae and the particles they produce.
Stardust
Author : John Gribbin
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 31,71 MB
Release : 2001-08-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780300090970
Book Description
The Gribbins relate the developments in 20th-century astronomy that have led to the shattering realization that all life is made of stardust scattered across the universe in great stellar explosions from supernovae. The authors eloquently explain how the physical structure of the universe has produced conditions ideal for life. 22 illustrations.
Stardust
Author : John Gribbin
Publisher : Allan Lane
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 34,2 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Science
ISBN :
Book Description
Life begins with the process of star formation. Except for hydrogen, every single atom of every single element in our bodies has been manufactured inside stars and then scattered across the universe in great stellar explosions known as supernovas, only then to be recycled as part of us. The hydrogen is primordial material, produced in the Big Bang, but everything else has been built up in the burning hearts of stars. We are made of stardust.
Stardust and the Molecules of Life (Why are the Amino Acids Left-Handed?).
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 9 pages
File Size : 18,46 MB
Release : 2010
Category :
ISBN :
Book Description
A mechanism for creating and selecting amino acid chirality is identified, and subsequent chemical replication and galactic mixing that would populate the galaxy with the predominant species will be described. This involves: (1) the spin of the 14N in the amino acids, or in precursor molecules from which amino acids might be formed, coupling to the chirality of the molecules; (2) the neutrinos emitted from the supernova, together with magnetic field from the nascent neutron star or black hole from the supernova selectively destroying one orientation of the 14N, thereby selecting the chirality associated with the other 14N orientation; (3) amplification by chemical evolution, by which the molecules replicate on a relatively short timescale; and (4) galactic mixing on a longer timescale mixing the selected molecules throughout the galaxy.
Stardust, Supernovae and the Chirality of the Amino Acids
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 14 pages
File Size : 20,31 MB
Release : 2011
Category :
ISBN :
Book Description
A mechanism for creating enantiomerism in the amino acids, the building blocks of the proteins, that involves global selection of one chirality by interactions between the amino acids and neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae is described. The selection involves the dependence of the interaction cross sections on the orientations of the spins of the neutrinos and the 14N nuclei in the amino acids, or in precursor molecules, which in turn couple to the molecular chirality. The subsequent chemical evolution and galactic mixing would ultimately populate the Galaxy with the selected species. The resulting amino acids could either be the source thereof on Earth, or could have triggered the chirality that was ultimately achieved for Earth's amino acids.
Possible Scenarios for Homochirality on Earth
Author : Michiya Fujiki
Publisher : Buy this from MDPI Books
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 48,51 MB
Release : 2019-11-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 3039217224
Book Description
In 1978, Fred Hoyle proposed that interstellar comets carrying several viruses landed on Earth as part of the panspermia hypotheses. With respect to life, the origin of homochirality on Earth has been the greatest mystery because life cannot exist without molecular asymmetry. Many scientists have proposed several possible hypotheses to answer this long-standing L-D question. Previously, Martin Gardner raised the question about mirror symmetry and broken mirror symmetry in terms of the homochirality question in his monographs (1964 and 1990). Possible scenarios for the L-D issue can be categorized into (i) Earth and exoterrestrial origins, (ii) by-chance and necessity mechanisms, and (iii) mirror-symmetrical and non-mirror-symmetrical forces as physical and chemical origins. These scenarios should involve further great amplification mechanisms, enabling a pure L- or D-world.
Chemistry for Sustainable Technologies 2nd Edition
Author : Neil Winterton
Publisher : Royal Society of Chemistry
Page : 845 pages
File Size : 46,9 MB
Release : 2021-02-04
Category : Science
ISBN : 1788012054
Book Description
Following the success of the first edition, this fully updated and revised book continues to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to sustainability issues in the context of chemistry and chemical technology. Its prime objective is to equip young chemists (and others) to more fully to appreciate, defend and promote the role that chemistry and its practitioners play in moving towards a society better able to control, manage and ameliorate its impact on the ecosphere. To do this, it is necessary to set the ideas, concepts, achievements and challenges of chemistry and its application in the context of its environmental impact, past, present and future, and of the changes needed to bring about a more sustainable yet equitable world. Progress since 2010 is reflected by the inclusion of the latest research and thinking, selected and discussed to put the advances concisely in a much wider setting - historic, scientific, technological, intellectual and societal. The treatment also examines the complexities and additional challenges arising from public and media attitudes to science and technology and associated controversies and from the difficulties in reconciling environmental protection and global development. While the book stresses the central importance of rigour in the collection and treatment of evidence and reason in decision-making, to ensure that it meets the needs of an extensive community of students, it is broad in scope, rather than deep. It is, therefore, appropriate for a wide audience, including all practising scientists and technologists. Extracts from reviews of the first edition: 'The book forms the basis for a superb training course on sustainability from a chemist's viewpoint, and a wonderful introduction to the subject for undergraduates and postgraduates... this unique book is highly recommended reading for all chemists' Trevor Laird, Org. Process Res. Dev., 2013, 17(7), 991 'I would even go so far as to recommend this to any serious graduate or undergraduate scientist as a must read' David Harwood, Reviews: A Guide to Publications in the Physical Sciences, 2011, 12(1), 9
First Life
Author : David Deamer
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 32,90 MB
Release : 2011-06-01
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0520948955
Book Description
This pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life’s connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and the physics and chemistry of carbon compounds. Deamer argues that life began as systems of molecules that assembled into membrane-bound packages. These in turn provided an essential compartment in which more complex molecules assumed new functions required for the origin of life and the beginning of evolution. Deamer takes us from the vivid and unpromising chaos of the Earth four billion years ago up to the present and his own laboratory, where he contemplates the prospects for generating synthetic life. Engaging and accessible, First Life describes the scientific story of astrobiology while presenting a fascinating hypothesis to explain the origin of life.
Organic Chemistry
Author : SOLOMONS.
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 1235 pages
File Size : 17,58 MB
Release : 2022-12-29
Category :
ISBN : 1119889448
