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griffzhowl 21 hours ago

Well, that's the question isn't it? Is it just a frozen accident, or is there some nonarbitrary reason for the left-handed molecules to be favoured?

throwawaymaths 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure but that might be an unknowable problem. What if the difference in likelihood were 60/40.

You could go down all sorts of rabbit holes and none of them would truly be falsifiable unless you observed an enantiomeric lifeform on some distant planet.

madaxe_again 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perhaps aliens eat right handed life, but left handed life is poison to them.

Seriously. It would be a pretty good selector, and said “alien” need be no more than a snippet of RNA - and it would be entirely gone from earth now, eliminated by us sinister life forms.

The only evidence would be the ubiquitous absence of R-entantiomers in life.

I think I might be lifting from Asimov - The Left Hand of the Electron.

Terr_ 12 hours ago | parent [-]

That kinda kicks the can down the road though, because we are faced with almost the same set of questions except about the hypothetical alien life.