Although physicists still did not understand it, they appreciated the import of the discovery that nature distinguished right from left in its very core. Other symmetries were immediately implicated—the correspondence between matter and antimatter, and the reversibility of time (if the film of an experiment were run backwards, for example, it might look physically correct except that right would be left and left would be right). As one scientist put it, “We are no longer trying to handle screws in the dark with heavy gloves. We are being handed the screws neatly aligned on a tray, with a
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