Acoustic Levitation as a Symmetry-Stripping Instrument for Prebiotic Reaction Networks

This preprint presents acoustic levitation as a symmetry-stripping analytical instrument for prebiotic and astrochemical reaction studies. By removing container-induced boundary effects and introducing controlled acoustic asymmetries, levitation enables intrinsic material and chemical properties to couple directly into measurable observables. The work outlines a measurement-first framework for containerless microdroplet experiments, specifies required physical and chemical observables, and defines falsifiable criteria for distinguishing genuine reaction pathways from boundary-driven artifacts. The approach provides a general methodology for validating proposed prebiotic reaction networks under controlled, container-free conditions. Keywords acoustic levitationcontainerless chemistrysymmetry strippingprebiotic chemistryastrochemical analogsGor'kov potentialacoustic streamingdroplet dynamicslevitation mass spectrometryboundary artifact removalmeasurement-first framework