Molecular chirality - does it matter?

Molecular chirality is ubiquitous in nature and plays an important role in chemistry and biology, for
instance in enzymic reactions, in pharmaceutics and even in the question about the origin of life. Chiral
molecules are characterized by the fact, that the molecules cannot be superposed onto their mirror
image. You may compare this to your left and right hand, two objects that cannot be superposed but
are otherwise identical (Fig.1). Likewise, the two mirror images (enantiomers) of chiral molecules have
basically identical physical properties. However surprisingly, their chemical activity can differ strongly,
which is the origin for their importance in nature. This makes these objects both very interesting and
very challenging to study. In my talk I will give a basic introduction into these interesting objects from
a physics point of view.