Above: Harry Worth demonstrating the comic potential of a mirror image in 1962
Below: an illustration by N. Burgess showing the chemical structure of a naturally occurring
amino acid with its mirror image, in Science vol. 386, issue 6728 (2024)
I.
As if we didn't have enough to worry about, a concerned group of senior scientists are now warning of the unprecedented risk to life presented by research into so-called mirror life - i.e., the production of bacteria constructed from mirror images of molecules [1].
II.
Apparently - and this is the first I've head of it [2] - all known life is homochiral and the molecules necessary for life "can exist in two distinct forms, each the mirror image of the other" [3].
Thus,
whilst dexterous DNA is made from nucleotides on the one hand, sinister
proteins are made from amino acids on the other. If you artificially
reverse this process, you'll still produce life, Jim, but not as we know
it [4].
III.
Unfortunately, it seems that such experimental work could, potentially, put humans, animals, and plants at risk of deadly new infections, spread by synthetic organisms against which there would be no natural immunity.
What's more, beyond causing lethal diseases, "researchers doubt the microbes
could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and
predators" [5]. And don't think for one moment that present-day antibiotics will come to the rescue ...
IV.
Still, don't let any of this spoil your Christmas.
Try to remember the old nihilist adage that, in the long term - whether mankind chooses to play fatal games with mirror matter, dark matter, or antimatter - nothing matters. The essential truth of the universe is ... extinction [6].
Notes
[1] Concerns are raised in a 299-page report that is discussed in the journal Science, Vol. 386, Issue 6728 (Dec 2024), pp. 1351-1353. Click here to read online. Those who wish to plough through the full report will find it in the digital repository at Stanford: click here.
[2] Despite my never having heard of mirror life until a few days ago, it seems that the possibility of such was already being discussed by Louis Pasteur back in the mid-19th century.
[3] Ian Sample, '"Unprecedented risk" to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on "mirror life" microbe research', in The Guardian (12 December, 2024): click here.
[4] It is unknown whether homochirality emerged before
or after life; whether life must have this
particular chirality; or indeed whether life needs to be homochiral at all.
[5] Ian Sample ... The Guardian (12 Dec 2024).
[6] As Nietzsche reminds us, even human knowledge and intelligence is only a passing phenomenon that arose by chance on a planet revolving around an average-sized star in a remote corner of the universe. Eventually, the star will die and so will the clever animal Man. In other words, even mind won't matter in the long run.
See Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', essay in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities press, International, 1990), p. 79.
