Spiral galaxies as enantiomers: Chirality, an underlying feature in chemistry and astrophysics

Spiral galaxies are axisymmetric objects showing 2D chirality when projected onto a plane. Features in common with tetrahedral molecules are pointed out, in particular the existence of a preferred chiral modality for genetic galaxies as in amino acids and sugars. Environmental effects can influence the intrinsic chirality of originally isolated stellar systems so that a progressive loss of chirality is recognized in the Hubble morphological sequence of galaxies. (c) 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.