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A comment on Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now. Parent comment

Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now by Daniel_Newby on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @08:30PM (#4812299)
One of SAM's gas chromatograph columns is chiral: it can separate left-handed molecules from right-handed ones. Terrestrial life uses amino acids that almost all one handedness, while Earthly sugars are mostly the other. Finding a similar pattern on Mars would be a smoking gun demonstration of extraterrestrial life.

http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/SAM/

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Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now by possibilistic on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @12:40AM (#4812998)
Exactly this. We'd expect for random abiotic organic chemistry to yield racemic mixtures of chiralities. Detection of one enantimer at higher levels than another typically calls for enzymes.
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