May01
It turns out that it was a fairly rare type, containing amino acids.
It turns out that it was a fairly rare type, containing amino acids.
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What’s the legal status on these meteorite chunks, with respect to the hunters who went looking for them after the fall? If Joe Sixpack went out in his pickup that night and managed to find a legitimate chunk of the meterorite in the bush somewhere, would he have the right to lay claim to it and sell it (seeing as how it’s apparently quite valuable)? Or would the government try to take possession?
Depends on where it falls. It’s the same as any other mineral.
If it falls on your land and you find it the law is clear that it is yours. Otherwise…?
Ken,
Unless you have tenants on the land who find it first and give it away
http://hamptonroads.com/2011/03/smithsonian-gets-meteorite-hit-va-doctors-office
An argument for why life only has left handed amino acids is competition. But these meteorites also have more left handed amino acids. Apparently nobody knows why. So is this my opportunity for a Nobel prize (since becoming a progressive president with no accomplishments is out of the question.)
Across a number of essays in the collection ‘The Let Hand of the Electron,’ Isaac Asimov once made an interesting case as to why this is. IIRC, it ultimately has to do with the way ultraviolet light interacts with electrons, due to their negative charge. In an antimatter universe with positive electrons, we could expect to see a preference for right-handed amino acids…
Interesting. So it’s really the question of why matter predominates anti-matter?
How do you know “matter” is matter, and not anti-matter? It just might be that anti-matter is predominant, but we just call it “matter” out of ignorance.
How about that?! Huh?!?