Former England captain Michael Vaughan has defended star India batter Virat Kohli after his flop show with the bat in the 1st innings of the Perth Test against Australia. Kohli managed just five runs before fending off a climbing Josh Hazlewood delivery to Usman Khawaja at slip. His 12-ball stay in the middle extended his lean patch with the bat, having managed just 93 runs in the recent home series loss to New Zealand. The former India captain hasn't scored a century since the West Indies tour last year. Vaughan, however, refused to rule Kohli out just yet despite his failure in the 1st innings in Perth. He suggested it's too early to judge Kohli, highlighting how the excessive seam movement made life difficult for most batters. "It is too hard to judge him. Coming out of the crease in Perth when the ball is bouncing is a tactic not many try to pull off and he went for that. It bounced and he found the outside edge. But I think that now we have seen Australia (bat),
Asteroid collisions with Earth are surprisingly common, with NASA estimating 48.5 tonnes of meteoric material entering our atmosphere daily. Most burn up, producing shooting stars. Although devastating asteroid impacts are rare in Earth's history, humanity has learned a crucial lesson from the catastrophic event 66 million years ago. The asteroid responsible for the dinosaurs' extinction was approximately six miles wide, but significantly smaller objects still pose a significant threat. In the face of potentially catastrophic asteroid impacts, scientists are racing to develop innovative solutions to protect our planet.
In New Mexico, scientists are exploring a futuristic solution to defend Earth against asteroid threats: harnessing X-ray blasts from nuclear explosions, the Guardian reported. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque have successfully demonstrated a revolutionary method to deflect incoming asteroids using nuclear explosions. For the experiment, researchers harnessed the power of X-rays from a nuclear blast to vaporise the surface of a nearby asteroid.
The process works by unleashing an immense pulse of radiation, heating the asteroid's surface to tens of thousands of degrees. This creates a rapidly expanding ball of gas that can nudge the asteroid off its catastrophic course. By precisely calculating the blast's impact, scientists believe this technique can effectively push threatening asteroids away from Earth, potentially saving humanity from doomsday.
"The primary mechanism involves using X-rays to rapidly heat the target surface, causing it to vaporize and expand into the adjacent vacuum. The expanding gas pushes against the asteroid, transferring momentum (in the opposite direction)," authors of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Physics wrote.
Scientists noted that the nuclear option is for larger asteroids, particularly when time is short. Researchers believe this strategy can effectively deflect asteroids up to 2.5 miles wide, although this isn't a rigid limit.
“If there is enough warning time, one can certainly deflect larger asteroids,” Dr Nathan Moore, the first author of the study said.
Mr Moore and his team plan to conduct further experimental tests to refine the X-ray deflection technique, building on their initial success. Their goal is to enhance the method's effectiveness through additional laboratory experiments. Ultimately, they envision a space-based demonstration, similar to NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, to test the technique on a real asteroid.
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