Sarah Walker

And then I left it for a long time because I thought it was like one of the most boring problems in the original life, but I've come back to it because I think there's something really deep going on here related to this like combinatorial explosion of the space of possibilities. But just to get to that point, like this feature of this handedness has been the main focus, but...

people take for granted the existence of chiral molecules at all, that this property of having a handedness. And they just assume that it's just a generic feature of chemistry. But if you actually look at

people take for granted the existence of chiral molecules at all, that this property of having a handedness. And they just assume that it's just a generic feature of chemistry. But if you actually look at

people take for granted the existence of chiral molecules at all, that this property of having a handedness. And they just assume that it's just a generic feature of chemistry. But if you actually look at

molecules, if you look at chemical space, which is like the space of all possible molecules that people can generate, and you look at small molecules, things that have less than about 7 to 11 heavy atoms, so things that are not hydrogen, almost every single molecule in that space is achiral, like doesn't have a chiral center. So it would be like a spoon of

molecules, if you look at chemical space, which is like the space of all possible molecules that people can generate, and you look at small molecules, things that have less than about 7 to 11 heavy atoms, so things that are not hydrogen, almost every single molecule in that space is achiral, like doesn't have a chiral center. So it would be like a spoon of

molecules, if you look at chemical space, which is like the space of all possible molecules that people can generate, and you look at small molecules, things that have less than about 7 to 11 heavy atoms, so things that are not hydrogen, almost every single molecule in that space is achiral, like doesn't have a chiral center. So it would be like a spoon of

spoon doesn't have it like it's the same as its mirror image it's not like a hand that's different than its mirror image but if you get to like this threshold boundary above that boundary almost every single molecule is chiral so you go from a universe where almost nothing has a mirror image form there's no mirror image universe of possibilities to this one where every single structure has pretty much a mirror image version and what

spoon doesn't have it like it's the same as its mirror image it's not like a hand that's different than its mirror image but if you get to like this threshold boundary above that boundary almost every single molecule is chiral so you go from a universe where almost nothing has a mirror image form there's no mirror image universe of possibilities to this one where every single structure has pretty much a mirror image version and what

spoon doesn't have it like it's the same as its mirror image it's not like a hand that's different than its mirror image but if you get to like this threshold boundary above that boundary almost every single molecule is chiral so you go from a universe where almost nothing has a mirror image form there's no mirror image universe of possibilities to this one where every single structure has pretty much a mirror image version and what

we've been looking at in my lab is that it seems to be the case that the original life transition happens around the time when you start accumulating. You push your molecules to a large enough complexity that chiral molecules become very likely to form. And then there's a cascade of molecular recognition where chiral molecules can recognize each other.

we've been looking at in my lab is that it seems to be the case that the original life transition happens around the time when you start accumulating. You push your molecules to a large enough complexity that chiral molecules become very likely to form. And then there's a cascade of molecular recognition where chiral molecules can recognize each other.

we've been looking at in my lab is that it seems to be the case that the original life transition happens around the time when you start accumulating. You push your molecules to a large enough complexity that chiral molecules become very likely to form. And then there's a cascade of molecular recognition where chiral molecules can recognize each other.

And then you get this sort of autocatalytic feedback and things self-reinforcing.

And then you get this sort of autocatalytic feedback and things self-reinforcing.

And then you get this sort of autocatalytic feedback and things self-reinforcing.

No, it's a super interesting feature. I think chirality breaks symmetry in time, not space. So we think of it as a spatial property, like a left and right hand. But if I choose the left hand, I'm basically choosing the future of that system for all time because I've basically made a choice between the ways that that molecule can now react with every other object in its chemical universe.

No, it's a super interesting feature. I think chirality breaks symmetry in time, not space. So we think of it as a spatial property, like a left and right hand. But if I choose the left hand, I'm basically choosing the future of that system for all time because I've basically made a choice between the ways that that molecule can now react with every other object in its chemical universe.

No, it's a super interesting feature. I think chirality breaks symmetry in time, not space. So we think of it as a spatial property, like a left and right hand. But if I choose the left hand, I'm basically choosing the future of that system for all time because I've basically made a choice between the ways that that molecule can now react with every other object in its chemical universe.

Oh, I see. And so you're actually like, when you have this splitting of making a molecule that now has another form it could have had by the same exact atomic composition, but now it's just a mirror image isometry, you're basically splitting the universe of possibilities every time.