Further reading: (web)

Please visit the astrochemistry lab web site at www.astrochem.org.

Scientific American article about molecules from space.

A nice Scientific American article about meteorites and handedness (chirality) of molecules.

Nice Cambridge Astronomy article about how handedness of molecules could arise in space from polarized radiation.

Science frontiers online on amino acid handedness and meteorities

Very impressive set of PDFs on line covering a range of topics related to asteroid impacts, meteorites etc.

Further reading: (Primary articles in the peer reviewed literature in alphabetical order)

Cronin, J. R., & Pizzarello, S. Enantiomeric excesses in meteoritic amino acids. Science 275, 951-955 (1997).

Ehrenfreund, P., Bernstein, M. P., Dworkin, J. P., Sandford, S. A., & Allamandola, L. J. (2001). The Photostability of Amino Acids in Space. Astrophys. J., 550, L95-L99. [PDF]

A PDF version of an scientific abstract comparing abundances of different amino acids in different meteorites.

Rubenstein, E. Bonner, W. A., Brown, G. S., & Bailey, J. Polarized stellar light. Science 283, 1415 (1999).

Rubenstein, E. Bonner, W. A., Noyes, H. P., & Brown, G. S. Supernovae and Life. Nature 306, 118 (1983).

Bonner, W. A., & Bean, B. D. asymmetric photolysis with elliptically polarized light. Orig. Life Evol. Biosphere 30, 513-517 (2000).