Using Light's Handedness To Find Alien Life 210
Rational Egoist writes "Scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have come up with a novel, easy way to detect life on other planets. Rather than try to measure the composition of atmospheres, they want to look at the chirality of light coming from the planet. From the article: '"If the [planet's] surface had just a collection of random chiral molecules, half would go left, half right," Germer says. "But life's self-assembly means they all would go one way. It's hard to imagine a planet's surface exhibiting handedness without the presence of self assembly, which is an essential component of life."' And they have already built a working model: 'Because chiral molecules reflect light in a way that indicates their handedness, the research team built a device to shine light on plant leaves and bacteria, and then detect the polarized reflections from the organisms' chlorophyll from a short distance away. The device detected chirality from both sources.' The article abstract is available online."
One problem (Score:5, Funny)
What if the aliens are ambidextrous?
raise your hand... (Score:4, Funny)
if you had to google chirality
Aliens, we are coming! (Score:2, Funny)
Very punny :P (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Define "Short Distance" (Score:3, Funny)
Smells of a "fund me, or PhD me" non-story.
Also possible: "Buy my freaking huge flashlights!"
Anyway, I guess a star would work as a light source to.
Re:raise your hand... (Score:1, Funny)
I'm fairly sure that the OP was making a 'handedness' joke.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Funny)
(really, outrageously Humongus sized) at one of the lagrange points.
No, please don't give them any more stupid ideas for what to call large telescopes [wikipedia.org]
Re:Life Jim, but not as we know it! (Score:3, Funny)
So, you have left handed gloves and right handed gloves, and you can't transform one into the other without doing something like flipping it through a fourth spatial dimension
Little known fact : that's actually how right hand gloves are made. Turns out that using a fourth spatial dimension is cheaper than machinery to build both types of gloves.
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Funny)
(really, outrageously Humongus sized) at one of the lagrange points.
No, please don't give them any more stupid ideas for what to call large telescopes [wikipedia.org]
Let's see...
Freakish Array of Radio Telescopes?
Stupidly Large Ultraviolet Telescope?
Binary Interferometric Narrowband Telescope?
Coordinated Unit of Networked Telescopes?
Re:raise your hand... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't they cover this in the second semester of freshman chem?
Re:raise your hand... (Score:5, Funny)
if you had to google chirality
You know, it's when you open the door for ladies.