Supernovae, Neutrinos, and the Chirality of the Amino Acids

TL;DR

This paper proposes a mechanism where neutrinos from supernovae interact with amino acids, potentially leading to a universal molecular chirality that influences the origin of life's building blocks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel physical process involving neutrino interactions and supernova asymmetries to explain amino acid chirality in the universe.

Findings

Neutrino interactions depend on spin orientations and molecular chirality.

Asymmetric neutrino emission from supernovae can induce enantioenrichment.

Galactic mixing distributes chiral amino acids across the galaxy.

Abstract

A mechanism for creating an enantioenrichment in the amino acids, the building blocks of the proteins, that involves global selection of one handedness by interactions between the amino acids and neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae is described. The chiral 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. It also requires an asymmetric distribution of neutrinos emitted from the supernova. 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 proteinaceous amino acids.