Exceptional Measurement of Chirality
32 points
6 days ago
| 3 comments
| rsc.org
| HN
gorgoiler
12 hours ago
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Of interest on the topic of determining chirality: How would you teach left from right to an alien civilization:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2936682

Odd that it this paradox isn’t mentioned in the RSC article but it is probably assumed that everyone with a degree in Chemistry has come across the puzzle before. How do you explain to an alien, or some person with whom you share no cultural background, what “left” and “right” are solely by talking to them over the phone? You’d better get it right — not only would a handshake be awkward if you got it wrong, they might also turn out to be made of antimatter!

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_52.html

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cma
18 minutes ago
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One resolution could be observe neutrinos from the same cosmic source and it could be resolved over the phone still.

I think the first neutrino observations from cosmic sources were after Feynman's lecture though.

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gavinray
11 hours ago
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Would the use for this be when you need exact enantiomer composition, versus a polarimeter which just tells you "racemic or not"?
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slyrus
10 hours ago
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2019. Somebody probably has a flow-matching/diffusion/foundation model chirality determination by now.
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ThrowawayTestr
9 hours ago
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Trained on data provided by this new technique
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