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From: eklhad@ihnet.UUCP (K. A. Dahlke)
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.physics
Subject: A Problem To Reflect Upon
Message-ID: <168@ihnet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Oct-84 19:45:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihnet.168
Posted: Fri Oct 19 19:45:35 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Oct-84 13:50:57 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 28

<  hmmmm,  wouldn't a Kurk make a delicious meal,  slurp slurp >

"Beam me up Scotty, fast!!!",  as a 5-legged gnerk approaches.
"Aye captain, but therrre's sompin rrong with the transporrterr for sure".
Indeed, the polarity of the horizontal scanner is reversed,
and the captain appears on the ship reflected. (ooops)
He feels fine, controlling his reflected body with a reflected brain,
and he wonders why the ship is backwards.
The question is:  can he live this way??
Some people develop reflected (heart on the wrong side and everything),
but that is different.
All Kurk's molecules are reversed too.
His proteans, enzymes, sugars, etc have the opposite parity.
If he tries to eat something, all the amino acids will be wrong.
(except glycine of course)
But he can live for a while can't he??
Oxygen is symmetric, so he could breath.
He only has to live an hour, Bones can cure anything
in that amount of time.
The underlying question is:
Are there any chemical reactions which proceed differently (if at all)
when all of the reactants are reflected?
Perhaps one could prove geometric invariance using the
symmetry of the fundamental forces of our universe.
Any thoughts on this irrelevant and unimportant topic??
-- 

Karl Dahlke    ihnp4!ihnet!eklhad