Uwe Meierhenrich Boeken

The central theme of this book revolves around the intriguing question of how life originated and why left-handed molecules were favored in its architecture. It highlights the significant imbalance between left-handed amino acids and their right-handed counterparts during the processes that initiated life on Earth. This imbalance led to the exclusive use of left-handed amino acids in the proteins that constitute life today. The author presents an engaging narrative on the formation of amino acids, starting with a clear introduction to stereochemistry. The book explores the reasons behind the left-handed preference of amino acids in living organisms and investigates the violation of parity in their emergence. Various captivating models proposed by physicists, chemists, and biologists are discussed, revealing the scientific debates surrounding the topic. Additionally, the author examines efforts to validate these models through the chirality module of the ROSETTA mission, which aimed to analyze chiral organic compounds potentially delivered to Earth by cometary impacts. This interdisciplinary exploration of astrobiology will captivate students, researchers, and anyone with an interest in the natural sciences. A foreword by Henri B. Kagan adds further depth to the discussion.

Divided into two parts, the first four chapters of Comets and their Origin refer to comets and their formation in general, describing cometary missions, comet remote observations, astrochemistry, artificial comets, and the chirality phenomenon. The second part covers the cometary ROSETTA mission, its launch, journey, scientific objectives, and instrumentations, as well as the landing scenario on a cometary nucleus. Along the way, the author presents general questions concerning the origin of terrestrial water and the molecular beginnings of life on Earth, as well as how the instruments used on a space mission like ROSETTA can help answer them. The text concludes with a chapter on what scientists expect from the ROSETTA mission and how its data will influence our life on Earth. As a result, the author elucidates highly topical and fascinating knowledge to scientists and students of various scientific backgrounds, allowing them to work with ROSETTA's data.