Molecular Chirality in Classical Spacetime: Solving the Controversy about the Spinning Cone Model of Rotating Molecules

The spinning cone is a model of rotating molecules used by Barron in 1986 in relation to asymmetric synthesis and to parity violation. He considered that the non-translating cone spinning about its symmetry axis has false chirality (i.e., it is not chiral), whereas Mislow concluded in 1999 that it is indeed chiral and severely criticized the true versus false chirality nomenclature introduced by Barron, who still disagreed in 2013 with the conclusion of Mislow. Here, it is shown that this controversy comes from an ambiguity in the spinning cone model and that in fact both authors were right. Light is thrown on the true chirality versus false chirality controversy with a very recently published result, which was thus unavailable to both authors: this is a new definition of chirality that encompasses the one introduced by Lord Kelvin at the end of the 19th century.