FIG. 1.

Sodium chlorate crystallizes in two forms, similar in structure but with different chiralities; the two forms are mirror images of each other. This chirality is a single bit of information held in a crystal, and that information can be passed from a mother crystal to a daughter crystal grown from a seed. The bluer crystals in this image, created using two polarizing filters, are “left-handed” crystals; the browner crystals are “right-handed” crystals. Even though the daughter crystals seeded from the mother crystals retain the hand, they do not retain the defects in the mother crystal.