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CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261020T102052Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20121116T203436Z
DTSTART:20070123T201500Z
DTEND:20070123T220000Z
UID:event62@bu.edu
URL:http://physics.bu.edu/internal/events/show/62
SUMMARY:The Chirality of Life: A Field Theory Approach
DESCRIPTION:Featuring Marcelo Gleiser\, Dartmouth College\nHosted by: Anton
	io Castro Neto\n\nPart of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.\n\nLife 
	is chiral. Amino acids that make up biomolecules are left-handed\, while al
	l sugars are right-handed. And yet\, when synthesized in the laboratory\, t
	he solutions come out 50-50. Is life's chirality simply an accident\, or is
	 it the result of dynamical processes that occurred in early Earth\, during
	 prebiotic times?  If life exists elsewhere in the Universe\, will it choos
	e the same chirality? In this talk\, I will address these and other questio
	ns of interest in astrobiology\,  using techniques from nonequilibrium stat
	istical mechanics and field theory. In particular\, I will argue that life'
	s chirality might be due to a symmetry-breaking phase transition. Exploring
	 this possibility\, I will obtain bounds on possible processes that may hav
	e selected life's chirality here and possibly in other life-bearing planeta
	ry platforms.
LOCATION: \, \, 
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CLASS:PUBLIC
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