Search is On for the Light of Life


Although Captain Kirk and crew could zip over to a planet at warp speed and teleport down to the surface to check if it was inhabited, current-day scientists will generally have to search for life from a distance. New research gives some hope that we could detect a "handedness" beacon from a planet full of microbes.
This handedness, or homochirality, is characteristic of life on Earth. The molecules that make proteins and DNA all have either a left-handed or right-handed orientation. Both orientations are made in equal quantities by non-biological processes, but life prefers to have just one type of hand over the other.

Full article by Michael Schirber on Space.com

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