Friday, November 5, 2010

The latest edition of QI is wrong.

I love QI, but in season 8 episode 8, they make the comment that you can't explain what is right and what is left to an alien. And in fact, you can. There is no right/left symmetry properly with with regard to weak nuclear interactions. If you aimed the electron emission of a carbon-14 atom at you, the electron would be spinning counter-clockwise. Which is to say the top is moving to the left.

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/PVB/Harrison/Parity/Parity.html

 Also, you can tell what matter is as opposed to anti-matter because in a supercollider matter muons will be produced slightly more often than antimatter muons. Also, you're nearly undoubtedly made out of it.

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