Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical, Engineering & Chemical Technology, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ (UK), Fax: (+44)?7594‐5804
Abstract:
Through a glass darkly : Several recent autocatalytic reaction models for the origin of homochirality have suggested ways in which one enantiomer of the product might be reconverted into the other by a recycling reaction in a closed system. These models are revealed to violate the principle of microscopic reversibility, a powerful tool for assessing the plausibility of proposed reaction networks even at far‐from‐equilibrium conditions.