On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 01:34:16AM -0400, David Hobby wrote:

> And I guess there might be a mechanism that produces more of one
> orientation of circularly polarized photons.  (Got me what it would
> be, though!)

Spiral galaxies have a handedness. I wonder if something something
spinning (a dust cloud? the original source of the dust cloud's angular
momentum?) like a spiral galaxy could account for it.

> <rant> I hate these popular articles where they omit crucial details
> so as not to overtax their readers.  I'm sure it is possible to write
> an article where everybody can read it to get the maximum possible
> understanding--even footnotes would be acceptable! <end rant>

I'm not certain they omitted it. I got the feeling the author(s) didn't
understand the difference between right and left circular polarization.
It's not something that most people know. Granted, given that the
article is about left & right handedness, it is really sloppy that they
didn't get it right, and it annoys me as well.

-- 
"Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>       http://www.erikreuter.net/

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