OF BLACKHOLES, GOLD AND PLATINUM

Scientists have always wondered just how and where heavy elements such as gold, silver, platinum and uranium, were formed. They may now be closer to a solution. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), professor of Physics Alexander Kusenko;Volodymyr Takhistov, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher; and George Fuller, a professor at UC San Diego; have proposed in a paper published recently in the journal Physical Review Letters that primordial blackholes may play an important role in the formation of these heavy elements. Astronomers have previously suggested that primordial blackholes could account for all or some of the universe’s mysterious dark matter and that they might have seeded the formation of supermassive blackholes that exist at the centres of galaxies. The UCLA research suggests that a primordial blackhole occasionally collides with a neutron star — the city-sized, spinning remnant of a star that remains after some supernova explosions — and sinks into its depths. 
When that happens, the primordial blackhole consumes the neutron star from the inside, a process that takes about 10,000 years. As the neutron star shrinks, it spins even faster, eventually causing small fragments to detach and fly off. Those fragments of neutron-rich material may be the sites in which neutrons fuse into heavier and heavier elements. However, the probability of a neutron star capturing a blackhole is rather low which is consistent with observations that these heavy elements exist only in some galaxies.

YAWN CONTAGION

It is the start of your day and you are raring to go. Tiredness isn’t anywhere on your horizon. Yet, when that exhausted looking co-commuter yawns, you feel a yawn coming on too. The more you try to stifle it, the more you feel like yawning. Why does this happen? Experts at the University of Nottingham have published research that suggests the human propensity for contagious yawning is triggered automatically by primitive reflexes in the primary motor cortex — an area of the brain responsible for motor function. They have also found out that our urge to yawn when we see someone else yawning varies from person to person. Contagious yawning is triggered involuntarily when we observe another person yawn — it is a common form of echophenomena, the automatic imitation of another’s words or actions. And it’s not just humans who have a propensity for contagious yawning — chimpanzees and dogs do it too.