Cosmic Rays and the Chiral Puzzle of Life

TL;DR

This paper proposes that cosmic ray-induced parity violation in weak interactions may influence molecular chirality, offering a potential explanation for the origin of biological homochirality through polarization and selection mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis linking cosmic irradiation and weak interaction parity violation to the emergence of biological homochirality, detailing mechanisms for polarization and chiral preference.

Findings

Cosmic rays can induce spin-polarized secondary particles affecting molecules.

A small chiral bias can be amplified over billions of replication cycles.

Mechanisms for polarization, preference, and dominance are proposed.

Abstract

Living organisms exhibit consistent homochirality. It is argued that the specific, binary choice made is not an accident but is a consequence of parity violation in the weak interaction expressed by cosmic irradiation. The secondary muons and pairs are spin- and magnetic moment- polarized and may introduce a small, net chiral preference when they interact electromagnetically or quantum mechanically with molecules that have made the transition to self-replication. Although this preference is likely to be very small, it may suffice to give a chirally-dominant outcome after billions of replications, especially if combined with chirally-unbiased conflict between the two choices. Examples of mechanisms that can manifest the three essential steps of polarization, preference and domination are presented and some variations and possible implications are discussed.