Physical Chirality. It Feeds on Negative Entropy
| dc.creator | Gilat, G. | |
| dc.date | 2002-06-20 | |
| dc.date | 2002-06-23 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T05:47:44Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T05:47:44Z | |
| dc.description | Chirality is considered by many scientists to be mainly a geometric concept. There exists also a physical aspect of chirality which is largely being overlooked at. Two examples of mechanical devices are introduced here that represent ``Physical Chirality''. These are a rotating water sprinkler and a variant of Crookes' radiometer. When interacting with appropriate media, they both choose only one mode of rotation out of two possible ones. Such a behavior does not obey time-reversal invariance, which is regarded to be a rule in classical mechanics. This is due to their chiral nature. Instead, they do obey a space-time (ST) law of invariance, that is, what is rotating in the opposite direction is the mirror-image of the given device. In a recent experiment of Koumura et al. they discovered a similar behavior of a molecular rotor. The possible biological significance of physical chirality is emphasized hereby, and the conclusion is that chiral molecular systems do not reach readily thermal equilibrium. In other words: ``Physical chirality does feed on negative entropy'', and therefore, it may well be of crucial value to life. | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0206074 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0206074 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/84766 | |
| dc.subject | Biological Physics | |
| dc.title | Physical Chirality. It Feeds on Negative Entropy | |
| dc.type | text |