Basic Things are Simple

Abstract

During a primordial ice age, ice crystallized in pools of liquid nitrogen on its poles, forming diamond-like crystals creating order from chaos. Models made from matchsticks and Plastacine™ or criss-crossed strips of cardboard stapled together are surprisingly strong (Figures 1 and 2). Random temperature fluctuations drove a ferroelectric phase transition at 72 degrees Kelvin, accommodating water molecules’ irregular tetrahedral shape and releasing latent energy as infrared laser light, ice light with wavelength λ ~ 4 μ. When such light was tried for de-icing aircraft wings, it was reflected. Likewise, it would have been reflected by surface ice and ice in clouds, just as Marconi’s first trans-Atlantic radio signals were. Lightning created nucleotides in the warm tropical waters Charles Darwin described, they absorbed ice light which photophosphorylated them. Reflection polarized the light, so only left or right-handed, chiral nucleotides were chosen (remember the thalidomide disaster!) and a noodle soup of chiral DNA emerged (Figure 3).