Latest news with #DART
Scottish Sun
2 days ago
- Sport
- Scottish Sun
Nathan Aspinall wants huge change to darts calendar including Ryder Cup-style tournament as he pitches incredible format
It would inject a fresh surge of excitement into the sport DART OF WAR Nathan Aspinall wants huge change to darts calendar including Ryder Cup-style tournament as he pitches incredible format Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) NATHAN ASPINALL has dropped a bombshell proposal to add a Ryder Cup-style tournament to the ever-growing darts calendar. Aspinall, 34, made a bold pitch to the PDC as he spoke of his desire to launch a new darts event that is similar to golf's cross Atlantic competition between Europe and the United States. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 1 Nathan Aspinall has called for a rule change that could have seen him unable to compete Speaking to Footy Accumulators, the world No.7 said: 'One change I would make is having a Ryder Cup-style tournament. You could do the UK against the rest of the world. 'You've got all the Dutch players, all the Germans, the likes of Damon Heta and people like that. 'You could do triples, pairs, and singles matches, it would be mega for players and fans. 'If you did it somewhere like in the centre of Germany, and change every year, you could probably sell a 30,000 seater stadium comfortably, and it would create some atmosphere. READ MORE DARTS LUKE OUT Darts legend Bobby George sends stark message to Luke Littler 'I think you've seen from the World Cup that you have to gel as a team. Luke Littler and Luke Humphries, even though they're mates, they didn't gel at the World Cup, which is why they didn't get far. 'You saw with Josh Rock and Darryl Gurney, and Gerwyn Price and Johnny Clayton, they clearly did gel, and that's why they made the finals. 'The only issue is that there is that much going on in darts at the moment, I think the PDC is going to leave it as it is for now. You never know, in the future it might be something that they look into.' Aspinall has made over £2.2million from darts over the years, winning the World Matchplay in 2023 and landing the spoils in the UK Open in 2019. CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS The two-time World Championship semi-finalist has also become a Premier League regular. But 'The Asp' also confessed how he no longer enjoys darts all that much, seeing it as simply a job. Darts legend Bobby George sends stark message to Luke Littler as he warns sensation he can 'go from hero to zero quick' Aspinall said: 'I'm not a big darts fan anymore. I don't sit at home when I'm not playing and watch it. 'I didn't watch the World Cup, for example. If I'm out of the tournament, I won't go back to my house and see who wins. 'I treat it as my job now, and I'm here to make as much money as I can Aspinall 'Everyone thinks it's all roses and you travel to these amazing places, which we do, but it's very lonely. 'I spent five days in New York on my own and was so bored. I'm missing a wedding next month because I'm in Keel, so I'll miss a lot of family time and key events. But I'm the one who has to make the sacrifices so my family can have a good life. 'I treat it as my job now, and I'm here to make as much money as I can. It's about giving my family the best life I can, which basically means I do it for the money. 'I want to win trophies and win titles, but first and foremost, I want to win as much money as I can so my family can have a great life, that's my main drive and my motivation. 'If you're treating it as a passion and as a hobby, I don't think there's any pressure on you to win because you're just enjoying yourself, so it's harder for me. I don't like losing, and I know that if I turn up to work and don't perform, I'm not making any money, so there's big pressure.'
Extra.ie
3 days ago
- Business
- Extra.ie
Brand new DART station set to open in Dublin next month
Commuters from the outskirts of south Dublin will have the option of an extra stop on the DART starting next month. The brand new Woodbrook DART station is set to open in a matter of weeks after being promised to the Shankill and Shanganagh community back in 2017, with substantive work beginning on the project in November 2023. The stop will be located between Bray and Shankill on the DART line and is on track to be in line with its originally scheduled opening date of August 10. The new station will be located between Bray and Shankill. Pic: Getty Images Situated around 40 minutes from the city centre, the station will be in operation for 191 daily runs on weekdays and will serve a housing development of about 2,300 homes. The project was funded through the National Transport Authority and will be the 147th station in the Irish Rail network. It will feature 174m platforms with passenger shelters, seating, lighting, CCTV, customer information, bicycle parking and ticketing facilities and can be accessed via Woodbrook Avenue. Woodbrook will serve a housing development with some 2,300 homes. Pic: Shutterstock There will also be new pedestrian and cycling access routes in the station vicinity, as well as a new pedestrian bridge above the tracks between the two platforms. Iarnród Éireann are eager to 'ensure people living in the catchment area have fast, frequent and sustainable travel options available, as the community grows and develops'. The station is situated about 40 minutes from the city centre. Pic: ABD/Shutterstock They added: 'Identified as a 'Future Development Area' in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan Core Strategy, the development at Woodbrook, together with the new station, supports transport and land-use policy, delivering a substantial compact sustainable residential community in the Woodbrook-Shanganagh area. 'The provision of the station will reduce reliance on the private car and assist Ireland in reaching its climate action targets.'
The Irish Sun
4 days ago
- Business
- The Irish Sun
New DART line serving thousands set to open in WEEKS as people cry ‘great stuff'
A BRAND new DART station running up to 191 times weekdays is set to open in south Dublin next month. The Woodbrook DART station was promised to members of the Shankill and Shanganagh community in 2017. 1 The new station will be named Woodbrook and will be Irish Rail's 147th station Credit: irishrail In November 2023, substantive work on the project began. It's now set to open on August 10, in line with the originally scheduled date. The service will operate 191 runs weekdays and is roughly 40 minutes from the city centre. The stop will be located between Bray on the outskirts of READ MORE IN TRAVEL And the new station will feature 174m platforms with passenger shelters, seating, lighting, CCTV, customer information, bicycle parking and ticketing facilities. It will be 174th in the Irish Rail network. The station was funded through the National Transport Authority and will serve a housing development of some 2,300 homes. And it can be accessed via Woodbrook Avenue. Most read in News Travel There will be new pedestrian and cycling access routes in the station vicinity. A new pedestrian bridge will provide access above the tracks between the two platforms. "This will ensure people living in the catchment area have fast, frequent and sustainable travel options available, as the community grows and develops." They continued: "Identified as a 'Future Development Area' in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan Core Strategy, the development at Woodbrook, together with the new station, supports transport and land-use policy, delivering a substantial compact sustainable residential community in the Woodbrook-Shanganagh area. "The provision of the station will reduce reliance on the private car and assist Ireland in reaching its climate action targets." Punters online were delighted at the news and took to One person said: "That's fierce exciting." Another commented: "Great stuff." A third added: "Nice." A fourth penned: "There's gonna be a new station between Bray and Shankill? "Ah man that's gonna take a long time to get used to."
Sunday World
4 days ago
- Sunday World
Graffiti artist who caused over €60k damage pepper-sprayed train driver when confronted
Judge Martin Nolan adjourned sentencing to later this week but warned 'I think he deserves a salutary lesson.' A GRAFFITI artist who caused more than €60,000 worth of damage to railway carriages and equipment pepper-sprayed a train driver in the face when he confronted him. Sean Cullen (22) assaulted the driver during a struggle when he was caught painting "tags" on trains at a DART depot, a court heard. He was also identified taking part in a series of similar spray-painting incidents that had 'heavy' financial consequences for Irish Rail. Judge Martin Nolan adjourned sentencing to later this week but warned 'I think he deserves a salutary lesson.' Cullen, an apprentice electrician of Hope Avenue, East Wall, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault and criminal damage. The court heard on September 25, 2021, a train driver was at Fairview DART depot when he spotted two people and recognised that they were not employees. One was Cullen and the driver approached and grabbed him. A physical altercation ensued and during the struggle, Cullen pepper-sprayed the driver to the left side of his face before the other man 'intervened'. The victim (51) suffered a swollen face and was in 'quite a lot of pain' when gardai arrived at the scene. Both perpetrators had fled at that stage and Cullen was identified on CCTV footage. His home was searched under warrant and gardai found spray cans and other items. Further damage was caused to a train at Dublin's docklands on February 21, 2020, when gardai were again able to identify Cullen from footage. The outside of the carriage was damaged with silver and black spray paint, while the inside was tagged with the letters SD, written by marker. The intensity of the tag's visibility "increased over time." On June 6, 2020, the word 'Akems' was sprayed on a signal equipment container at the DART tracks at Merrion Gates in south Dublin. Prosecutor Marc Thompson BL said the total damage Cullen was accountable for was €60,914, covering carriages that had to be taken out of commission, and resprayed. There was a potential further loss of €40,000 to the company for use of replacement vehicles but Cullen was not being held responsible for that. Mr Thompson said there was a 'certain similarity' with tags at other locations such as 'Akems' and 'SD' and some of these tags were done by other people. Cullen had one previous conviction for a similar criminal damage offence. Sean Cullen Today's News in 90 Seconds - July 16th Defence barrister Karl Monahan said it was a 'very unfortunate series of offences' with 'no real explanation' and serious consequences for Irish Rail. There was a lot of graffiti around in the area where Cullen grew up, and he 'became fascinated by it,' Mr Monahan said. He also became interested in a movement by street artists in New York in the 1970s spraying trains, and started doing this himself. 'He was shocked when he found out the costs associated with these acts,' Mr Monahan said. 'He never imagined it would be anything like that.' Judge Nolan said the accused had 'persistently' sprayed the carriages, 'causing a huge amount of inconvenience.' Mr Monahan said Cullen 'can't undo that' but he had €2,000 compensation in court and had written a letter of apology. He said he was 'deeply ashamed' of himself, had never intended to cause any harm and did not realise the scale of the damage. The case was adjourned to Friday.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant space 'boulders' unleashed by NASA's DART mission aren't behaving as expected, revealing hidden risks of deflecting asteroids
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Three years ago, NASA made history by deliberately smashing a spacecraft into a large asteroid, altering its course and demonstrating humankind's ability to protect our planet from "potentially hazardous" space rocks in the future. But a new analysis hints that the debris from this monumental collision is not behaving as expected, raising doubts about the success of future asteroid-deflecting missions. On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft purposefully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, crashing directly into the middle of the space rock at around 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h). The mission was a smashing success: Not only did DART alter Dimorphos' trajectory — shortening its trip around its partner asteroid Didymos by around 30 minutes — it also completely changed the shape of the asteroid. The collision, which occurred more than 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, demonstrated that this type of action, known as the "kinetic impactor" method, was a conceivably viable option for protecting our planet from potentially hazardous asteroids. However, a new study, published July 4 in The Planetary Science Journal, has revealed a hidden complication: Dozens of large "boulders," which were knocked loose from the asteroid by the spacecraft are apparently traveling with greater momentum than predicted and have configured into surprisingly non-random patterns. Related: Could scientists stop a 'planet killer' asteroid from hitting Earth? The researchers analyzed images from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), which flew alongside DART to monitor the collision. This allowed them to track 104 boulders — each between 0.7 and 11.8 feet (0.2 to 3.6 meters) across — as they shot away from the asteroid. The big takeaway was that these boulders had around three times more momentum than predicted, likely as the result of "an additional kick" the boulders received as they were pushed away from the asteroid's surface, study lead author Tony Farnham, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, said in a statement. "That additional factor changes the physics we need to consider when planning these types of missions," he added. The team also noted that the boulders were arranged into unexpected patterns: "We saw that the boulders weren't scattered randomly in space," Farnham said. "Instead, they were clustered in two pretty distinct groups, with an absence of material elsewhere, which means that something unknown is at work here." The researchers want to learn more about what happened so that we have all the necessary information at hand if and when we need to make decisions about using a kinetic impactor to protect our planet from an incoming space rock in the future. "If an asteroid was tumbling toward us, and we knew we had to move it a specific amount to prevent it from hitting Earth, then all these subtleties become very, very important," study co-author Jessica Sunshine, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, said in the statement. "You can think of it as a cosmic pool game," she added. "We might miss the pocket if we don't consider all the variables." This is not the first time scientists have noticed something unexpected about the fallout from the DART mission. In April 2024, researchers noted that some of the largest boulders might have been set on a collision course with Mars and could smash into the Red Planet in around 6,000 years, potentially endangering any future human colonies that may live there. In August last year, simulations using LICIACube data also suggested that some of the smaller fragments from the asteroid could hit Earth in around 30 years, potentially triggering a spectacular meteor shower without posing a real threat to our planet. However, despite all these uncertainties, the kinetic impactor method is still the most viable option to protect ourselves from any real threat of being hit by an asteroid. RELATED STORIES —'City killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 could shower Earth with 'bullet-like' meteors if it hits the moon in 2032 —An 'invisible threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day collide with Earth, simulations show —'God of Chaos' asteroid Apophis could still hit Earth in 2029, study hints — but we won't know for 3 more years This topic was discussed earlier this year when the "city killer" asteroid 2024 YR4 was temporarily believed to have a roughly 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. The odds of a collision are now zero, but experts are keen to keep the conversation going, especially as the severe cuts to NASA's budget proposed by the Trump administration could limit our ability to spot dangerous space rocks. Researchers will get a better idea of what is happening with the Dimorphos debris next year, when ESA's Hera spacecraft arrives at the asteroid to properly study the fallout from the DART collision.
