Doesn't this years Chemistry Nobel throw new light ( and doubts) on the Fermi paradox ?

The thread OP could use a little more information on the research which earned the prize.

Guessing it has to do with the non-linearity of asymmetric organic synthesis, and the fact that all Earth life has a one-sided chirality, when one would expect two handedness.

But I'm no chemist; that was only my day job.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by MigL

Here are three things I found interesting about the prize and its subject.

1) The discovery initially concerned a question that has puzzled scientists for more than a century.

2) The timeline from the initial discovery (mid 1980s) to the second conclusive discovery was 20 years with a further 20+ years before the Nobel.

3) The second discovery also showed how unstable the chemistry could be and how thus how quickly reactions pertinent yo life could spread.

It point 3, not about the reactions themselves, but their instability and ease of spreading that suggests Life may be much more widespread around the Universe than we think and this is directly opposed to Fermi which proposes how rare Life must be so it becomes an issue of Chemistry v Statistics.

I am also surprised that the Nobel has not received attention here with all those active members who are chemists of some sort.

7 minutes ago, studiot said:

Here are three things I found interesting about the prize and its subject.

1) The discovery initially concerned a question that has puzzled scientists for more than a century.

2) The timeline from the initial discovery (mid 1980s) to the second conclusive discovery was 20 years with a further 20+ years before the Nobel.

3) The second discovery also showed how unstable the chemistry could be and how thus how quickly reactions pertinent yo life could spread.

It point 3, not about the reactions themselves, but their instability and ease of spreading that suggests Life may be much more widespread around the Universe than we think and this is directly opposed to Fermi which proposes how rare Life must be so it becomes an issue of Chemistry v Statistics.

I am also surprised that the Nobel has not received attention here with all those active members who are chemists of some sort.

Yes, I read about this. It seems the prize was awarding for discovering a class of autocatalytic organic synthesis reactions in which the chirality of the first product molecule, produced at the start of the reaction, determines through its autocatalytic effect on the rest the predominate chirality of the product generated.

It is hypothesised that such chiral autocatalytic processes could, maybe, have been responsible for the predominance of specific enantiomers in biochemistry. So yeah, that is important. We now have a possible route by which the chiral exclusiveness that we see in biochemical molecules could have arisen.

But as far as I am aware, nobody has yet come forward with natural autocatalytic pathways of this kind, during abiogenesis, for specific biochemically important molecules. Though maybe others will know more about this.

24 minutes ago, studiot said:

I am also surprised that the Nobel has not received attention here with all those active members who are chemists of some sort.

Oh, I am just silently protesting the lack of a Nobel for biology (but then, I am no real chemist).