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Article: Scientists give a handedness to the search for alien life.
- Article from:
- NewsRx Science
- Article date:
- May 17, 2009
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Visiting aliens may be the stuff of legend, but if a scientific team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is right, we may be able to find extraterrestrial life even before it leaves its home planet--by looking for left- (or right-) handed light.
The technique the team has developed* for detecting life elsewhere in the universe will not spot aliens directly. Rather, it could allow spaceborne instruments to see a telltale sign that life may have influenced a landscape: a preponderance of molecules that have a certain "chirality," or handedness. A right-handed molecule has the same composition as its left-handed cousin, but their ...