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Old 12-18-2009, 09:15 PM   #81
Kybosh
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor View Post
The more I've studied science the more the 'randomness' makes perfect sense, you can learn about the universe being created from nothing, marvel at the biodiversity brought about by evolution and be in awe of nature when you truly spend the time to learn biology, astronomy, physics and chemistry.
This is funny. I used to think the same way but the more I studied chemistry the more the "randomness" didn't quite work (for me anyway). One of the more interesting aspects of nature is that, at a molecular level, it is common for molecules (and by extension larger groups of molecules ie. proteins/enzymes) to be naturally produced as a single mirror image. A simple example of this is your right and left hands are mirror images of one another. Your hands are physically the same but no matter what you do you can't turn your right hand into the left and vice versa. So, in nature only one compound (of a possible two) are naturally produced for all naturally occuring molecules (that can exhibit mirror images anyway) such as amino acids and monosaccharides. This notion is called chirality.

Ok, so why did I bring up that long diatribe? Well, where/what is the origin of chirality? Why does only one mirror image of an amino acid naturally form over the other? There are theories of why this phenomena came about but nothing has been proven. I'm not saying that some omnipotent being is responsible for this phenomena but I don't buy that this happened at random.

The processes of Nature often appear to occur at random but that might just be because we don't yet recognize the pattern.
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