Right handed preference

During the review lecture on July 7, the question of orientation came up and why we use a right handed system. I mentioned that it is cultural, that we might prefer the right hand over the left hand and that in physics (weak interactions) or biology (DNA orientation), the symmetry is broken and right-handed systems were preferred. As the Quanta magazine explains well, it could be that the right handed magnetic polarization of muons produced by high energy cosmic rays could influence the RNA and DNA build-up. The cosmic-ray muons may ionize a right handed helix more often and give rise to slightly more mutations, having the effect that the right-handed RNA and DNA evolved faster. Now we only have to explain why most people use the right hand more than the left and why the heart is mostly on the left. It might all be related. Working with the right hand might protect the heart more on the left so that also the right handedness could be linked to the location of the heart. (A left-handed hunter would get more likely have his left side with the heart ripped off.....) Now, the heart location could be linked genetically with the position of some genes on the DNA which is a bit far fetched but not impossible to imagine.

In the end, the human preferences of the right handedness could follow from an imbalance of symmetry in the weak interaction force. So, also the choice of the cross product as we do could be tied to fundamental physics. Of course however, everything in 21a math would also work if we look at it in a mirror.

By the way, the right hand rule is on the banknote in Switzerland. See this tweet. Still unthinkable in the US to make science a prominent issue.
Source: Selin Sahin on Unsplash Forgive to add a bit of a rant here: the rather simplistic Darwinistic point of view has played out historically also on a big scale. Societies and civilisations which have known how to use science have survived with greater probability than others. Actually, when looking at the news these days, one can easily predict that the United States might soon end up at the bottom and become a new template example in the anthropology sagas of "fall of civilisations". Rather than reading books like Strathern (chapter 10), one can also look at youtube these days: Example: Michael Frachetti: Lessons from the rise and fall of civilizations. Tashbulak, is one of the lesser known ``lost cities" in Uzbekistan from the Qarakhanid Khanate. It was there the role of Carbon steel (the science of alloys) which helped to produce stronger arms and then a lack of flexibility which might have brought the downfall. [A movie by Long now foundation, which promotes ``long-term thinking", a badly needed quality in these days, where the lizard brains have taken over. An other nice talk there by Steven Pinker which is relevant today, where essentially all ideals from enlightenment are absent. Especially by previously enlightened news outlets, (on both the political left and political right, which to get back to the theme have absolutely nothing to do with cosmic rays.) ]