  The emergence of biomolecular homochirality is a critical open question in
the field of origins of life. In order to seek out an answer to this unsettled
issue, a number of mechanisms have been offered over time, but it still remains
a great challenge to date. In this paper, based on the hydrothermal vent theory
for the origins of life, I tentatively put forward a new hypothesis that the
prebiotic emergence of the uniform chirality of biomolecules might have been
specifically determined by the spin state of electrons during their prebiotic
syntheses on the surfaces of greigite, a mineral which has been frequently
argued to have played an important role in the evolutionary context of life. An
experimental model to test the hypothesis has also been proposed. Taken into
consideration the possible widespread existence of greigite in submarine
hydrothermal vent systems which have been frequently argued as a potential
cradle for the origins of life, the suggested model, if could be experimentally
demonstrated, may be suggestive of where and how life originated on early
Earth.
