...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Mirror Chemistry
- 113 statements
- 20 feature instances
- 18 referencing feature instances
| Mirror Chemistry | type |
FeatureClass | |
| Mirror Chemistry | label |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry | page |
MirrorChemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry | comment |
Many of the molecules required for life have the property known as chirality or "handedness". That is, they are not the same as their mirror image, like a left shoe which will not fit properly on your right foot no matter how you rotate it. This matters because a lot of the molecules our bodies consist of are chiral, in particular the amino acids, which are the building blocks for proteins. All multicellular organisms on Earth are made of L-(or levo-)amino acids.note This is not to be confused with the molecule's optical activity: that is, if we shine a light through its solution, l-isomer will rotate its polarization plane (a plane the EM-wave is oscillating) to the left, that is, counter-clockwise, and d-isomer, or dextrorotatory one, will do it to the right, or clockwise. Many L-isomers are in fact l- (or (-), as chemists now prefer to designate them) isomers, and vice versa, but it's not true for all of them. Dextro-amino acids (except cysteine) are exceedingly rare in Earth organisms and are used only by some bacteria and in a few very specialized cases by larger creatures. Science-fiction writers have commonly Shown Their Work by referencing this fact. It generally comes up in one of two situations: Aliens can have their entire biochemistry built on molecules with the opposite chirality from that used on Earth, making it simultaneously identical to Earth chemistry (and therefore clearly possible) and incompatible with it. Some piece of Applied Phlebotinum may be capable of mirror-reversing people or objects. In either case, this usually manifests itself as an inability to eat the same food in the same way. Either food tastes different depending on your handedness, or wrong-handed food has no nutritional value or is actively dangerous. There may be some mention of the fact that ethanol is a biologically interesting molecule that doesn't have this property — so, regardless of chirality, everyone can always get drunk together, and you can make moonshine from organic stuff that's otherwise useless for you because it's of the wrong chirality. This is often a form of Artistic License – Chemistry, especially when authors try to extrapolate to what happens with molecules that are too complex to be synthesized chemically. Contrast No Biochemical Barriers. |
|
| Mirror Chemistry | fetched |
2023-08-07T16:14:52Z | |
| Mirror Chemistry | parsed |
2023-08-07T16:14:52Z | |
| Mirror Chemistry | processingComment |
Dropped link to ArtificialAtmosphericActions: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Mirror Chemistry | processingComment |
Dropped link to ArtisticLicenseBiology: Not an Item - CAT | |
| Mirror Chemistry | processingComment |
Dropped link to ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Mirror Chemistry | processingComment |
Dropped link to DummiedOut: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Mirror Chemistry | processingComment |
Dropped link to ExtremeOmnivore: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Mirror Chemistry | processingComment |
Dropped link to ScienceMarchesOn: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Mirror Chemistry | isPartOf |
DBTropes | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_1e82ffe9 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_1e82ffe9 | comment |
Many colony worlds in the 2300 AD universe have dextro-based life. To get around this, human colonists sterilize large patches of ground and use "pay dirt" from Earth to set up a localized biosphere suitable for growing crops. On the other hand, many native creatures from dextro-worlds (most infamously Aurore) will take a bite out of humans or their livestock without worrying whether it will make them sick. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_1e82ffe9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_1e82ffe9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| 2300 AD (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_1e82ffe9 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_213e21da | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_213e21da | comment |
Black Hole High: Episode "Chirality": The concept of left- and right-handed molecules are introduced in a chemistry class — then used it as a justification for a Personality Swap episode. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_213e21da | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_213e21da | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Black Hole High | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_213e21da | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_30963b69 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_30963b69 | comment |
One of the stories in Callahan's Crosstime Saloon has a "Mirror Earth" with right-handed proteins in the place of our left-handed ones. A con artist discovers a means to travel between the two, but finds that there's little he can do with it; Equivalent Exchange is in effect — if he does anything that benefits one world at the expense of the other, the gate will fail, possibly trapping him in a world where he can't digest the food. He finally hits on ethanol; it's not a chiral molecule as said above, but the esters (which determine taste and texture) are. Result: one world's really bad moonshine whiskey is the other's Wonderbooze. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_30963b69 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_30963b69 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Callahan's Crosstime Saloon | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_30963b69 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_3fbd173e | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_3fbd173e | comment |
Freefall. In the "garden-world" of Pfouts, life developed with opposite chirality as compared to humans, making it more inhospitable to human colonization than a bare ball of rock could ever be. Thus, some clever humans are speculating about uplifting a local species to sentience, thus gaining a colony-by-extension for humanity. One of the main characters is an uplifted wolf, made as a proof-of-concept for that endeavour. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_3fbd173e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_3fbd173e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Freefall (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_3fbd173e | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_42ffb88e | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_42ffb88e | comment |
SCP Foundation: SCP-739 is a small closet with mirrored interiors. Closing a person in the booth once will flip all their amino-chains. Closing them in twice will switch them back, but repeating the experiment too many times with the same subject leads to something else emerging. As a fun side benefit, locking sugar packets in the closet will flip them as well. The scientist specifically notes that they would make excellent diet sweeteners. One of the items vended by SCP-261, an anomalous vending machine, is a bar of Hershey's with all text mirrored. Scientific analysis of the chocolate reveals the chirality of the amino acids and sugars that it contains is the opposite to those of Earth-life organic compounds. SCP-5300 is theorized to be a pocket of space possessing topology akin to that of a Klein bottle. Traversing the entire manifold and returning to where you started causes you to invert chirality. This caused lots of bad stuff to happen to the crew that got sucked into the anomaly. |
|
| Mirror Chemistry / int_42ffb88e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_42ffb88e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| SCP Foundation (Website) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_42ffb88e | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6209d3ce | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6209d3ce | comment |
In Trauma Center a "Chiral Reaction" indicates that a GUILT, a man-made parasite, is present in a patient. What precisely this means is left unclear, though it may be suggesting that GUILT have opposite chirality to humans. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6209d3ce | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6209d3ce | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Trauma Center / Videogame | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_6209d3ce | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_69a38d4a | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_69a38d4a | comment |
Spock Must Die! has a mirror-reversed copy of Spock created in a transporter accident. He's unable to eat anything, and so he finds himself slowly starving while he works with a chemistry set in order to create mirrored food he can eat and survive. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_69a38d4a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_69a38d4a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Spock Must Die! | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_69a38d4a | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6f5aa958 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6f5aa958 | comment |
Tour of the Merrimack: The crew aren't worried about picking up any diseases in the Myriad because life on those worlds uses opposite-handed proteins, which are incompatible with human biology. It's likened to attempting to attach a four-post wheel to a five-post axle with opposite-thread bolts. It is also mentioned that the Hive is unique among all known species in that it is able to digest proteins of either chirality. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6f5aa958 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_6f5aa958 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Tour of the Merrimack | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_6f5aa958 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_70814599 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_70814599 | comment |
One Stargate SG-1 fanfic mentions a right-handed world being used as a prison planet. Plenty of oxygen, but if you escape the prison camp there's absolutely nothing to eat. Unless you dismember the guards. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_70814599 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_70814599 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Stargate SG-1 | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_70814599 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7668653b | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7668653b | comment |
A plotline in Mass Effect 3 is trying to secure a krogan and turian alliance. EDI will discuss the logistics of this, including the fact due to this trope, the krogan won't be able to eat any turian food; and as such must be sure to bring their own. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7668653b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7668653b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Mass Effect 3 (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_7668653b | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7988cb68 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7988cb68 | comment |
In Mass Effect, the turians and quarians have roughly humanoid biochemistry, but with opposite-chirality proteins, while several other species have the same chirality of protein as humans do. Eating food intended for an opposite-chirality species will at best pass through one's system without providing any nutrients and at worst lead to dangerous allergic reactions. Discussed several times, particularly in Mass Effect 2: The page quote comes from an overheard interaction where a turian grocery store operator has to deal with a not-too-bright human customer. In a "deleted scene", a turian is amazed by human alcohol. In her bar on Ilium, Matriarch Aethyta warns Shepard against eating the beer nuts in the red bowls because they're for turians and quarians. She also speaks of a Noodle Incident where a krogan drank liquefied turian on a dare. Krogans are infamous for Super Toughness to the point where it's a Running Gag, but according to Aethyta "nobody came out of that one looking pretty." Krogan in general can eat just about anything. The worst they can get from eating dextro food is diarrhea. In the Dark Star Lounge on the Citadel, when Shepard asks for the strongest drink in the bar, the bartender serves up a green liquor and remarks: "[It's] guaranteed to knock you on your ass, unless you're dextro-DNA like me. If you are, it'll kill ya." This comes up in the second game if you want to romance your dextro-based squadmates. If a female Shepard romances her turian teammate Garrus, Dr. Mordin Solus warns her against swallowing turian semen. If a male Shepard romances his quarian teammate Tali, Dr. Mordin Solus warns him against unprotected oral sex (for Tali's sake, Shepard's sake or both). One of the "Cerberus Daily News" briefs mentions a new treatment that temporarily allows dextro- or levo-based species to safely eat the other type of food. Despite the fact that the eater gets no nutritional benefit from the mirror food and they have to "purge" within 24 hours, it becomes a fad among gourmands. A plotline in Mass Effect 3 is trying to secure a krogan and turian alliance. EDI will discuss the logistics of this, including the fact due to this trope, the krogan won't be able to eat any turian food; and as such must be sure to bring their own. In case you're wondering, Mass Effect pulls a major case of Artistic License – Biology with this. Turns out the amino acid differences aren't dangerous to those that use the other ones. If anything they'd taste like mint or some kind of sugar. Same with alcohol per se, as ethanol is, in fact, not chiral. So, if the bar happened to be out of stock on Turian brandy, triple-filtered, ordinary vodka would be just as admissible through your emergency induction port as the former. |
|
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7988cb68 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_7988cb68 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Mass Effect (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_7988cb68 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8526b8b9 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8526b8b9 | comment |
In There and Back Again by Pat Murphy, anyone who passes through a wormhole gets mirror-reversed. Any gathering of people who have done a lot of wormhole travel needs two cooks: one for the travelers who are currently "right-handed" (having passed through an odd number of wormholes) and one for the ones who are "left-handed" (having passed through an even number). | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8526b8b9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8526b8b9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| There and Back Again | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_8526b8b9 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8aca8da3 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8aca8da3 | comment |
In Fantastic Four (2022), the Four get into a fight with Nicholas Scratch and get hit with a spell that seemingly does nothing, after which Scratch simply leaves, satisfied. After having a bad reaction to some food, Reed finds out that the spell actually mirrored them on a cellular level, meaning they are unable to digest any food and will eventually starve to death. Reed eventually manages to use the Dark Dimension to reverse the effects but to his horror discovers that despite Johnny's attempts to sterilize them, one mirrored cyanobacteria slipped past and has gotten into a lake turning it into sludge: with no predators on Earth capable of digesting it, said bacteria will eventually consume all the water on Earth and wipe out the biosphere. They manage to kill the bacteria by getting Sue to turn the Sun briefly invisible. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8aca8da3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_8aca8da3 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Fantastic Four (2022) (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_8aca8da3 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_93e8b35e | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_93e8b35e | comment |
In Through the Looking Glass, Alice speculates that looking-glass milk might not be good to drink. This is probably the Ur-Example; in fact, it predates the coining of the word "chirality" by several years. In The Annotated Alice, Martin Gardner discusses the chemical reasons why this would be true, before moving on to point out that looking-glass milk would likely be made of antimatter,note probably not, because if the milk were antimatter everything else in the looking-glass world would be too, and Alice wouldn't have lived long enough to wonder about it, making it really bad to drink. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_93e8b35e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_93e8b35e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| AliceInWonderland | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_93e8b35e | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_cfbcd69f | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_cfbcd69f | comment |
In Leaving the Cradle insectoid species are D-chiral, which makes them incompatible with other species biochemically, much like turians from Mass Effect. This sometimes causes some political problems, since their preferred method of colonizing other life-supporting worlds is to terraform them by blazing large patches of the continent to cinder and reseed it with samples of their own ecosystem. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_cfbcd69f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_cfbcd69f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Leaving the Cradle (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_cfbcd69f | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d1490551 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d1490551 | comment |
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny has an "n-axial inversion device", which mirror-reverses anyone or anything that passes through it. The protagonist goes through it about halfway through the book. It turns out that quite a few things taste better when you're mirror-reversed. Especially bourbon. This is because although alcohol is symmetric, the various flavorings are not. Of course, one has to be careful when using the device. One unfortunate individual accidentally goes through the wrong way and gets turned inside out! | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d1490551 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d1490551 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Doorways in the Sand | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_d1490551 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d20a9f64 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d20a9f64 | comment |
The Pentagon War: Centaurian metabolism is based around levulorotary glucose (instead of the dextrorotary glucose we Earth people use). Centaurian food has no nutritional value to humans, and can sometimes be downright poisonous to them — and vice-versa. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d20a9f64 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_d20a9f64 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| The Pentagon War | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_d20a9f64 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_de8ae019 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_de8ae019 | comment |
Star Carrier series: Osiris, a planet orbiting 70 Ophiuchi, is a rare garden world where humans can survive unprotected. However, they have to grow their own food crops since the native life has the opposite chirality from Earth life and is therefore inedible. Vulcan, a planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani A, has local life with the exact same chirality as terrestrial life. Unfortunately, the same is true for the new aliens discovered in the fifth book, and these aliens are looking for some new prey to hunt and eat. |
|
| Mirror Chemistry / int_de8ae019 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_de8ae019 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Star Carrier | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_de8ae019 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_e5c5bc22 | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_e5c5bc22 | comment |
In GURPS Time Travel, this is one of the entries on the "something went wrong with our dimension-traveling device" chart. | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_e5c5bc22 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_e5c5bc22 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| GURPS (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_e5c5bc22 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_f0c816fb | type |
Mirror Chemistry | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_f0c816fb | comment |
In the second episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White gives a lesson on chirality to his class, mentioning thalidomide as an example. It also foreshadows his transformation from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to ruthless drug lord. It can be also noted that the P2P cooking method Walt uses later on to make his meth produces both chiral variants of the molecule (which turns up in one of the questions he quizzes Victor with in "Box Cutter"). | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_f0c816fb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Mirror Chemistry / int_f0c816fb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Breaking Bad | hasFeature |
Mirror Chemistry / int_f0c816fb |
The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
Copyright of DBTropes.org wrapper 2009-2013 DFKI Knowledge Management. Imprint. - Thanks to Bakken&Baeck for hosting. Contact.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.