Heat pumps are high-efficiency electric heaters that take heat from the air or ground and concentrate it. Currently, extracting geothermic ground heat typically involves costly processes such as boring holes deep into the ground or laying long lengths of pipe underground. Enerdrape, a start-up at EPFL in Lausanne, has come up will a simpler way […]
Switzerland to see lunar eclipse on 16 May 2022
On May 16, 2022 (the night of May 15 in the Western Hemisphere), the Moon enters the Earth’s shadow, creating a total lunar eclipse, the first since May of 2021, according to NASA. The NASA animation above shows the changing appearance of the Moon as it travels into and out of the Earth’s shadow. The […]
Swisscom fixed and mobile networks out on Tuesday
Swisscom’s telephone network went down on Tuesday for 30 minutes, reported RTS. On Tuesday 3 May 2022 between 22:23 and 22:53 customers across Switzerland using Swisscom’s fixed and mobile networks were unable to access the internet. According to Swisscom, the outage was related to maintenance work. Much to the frustration of football fans the outage […]
CERN collider restart could revolutionise physics
On 22 April 2022, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator located on the outskirts of Geneva, restarted after a break of more than three years for maintenance and upgrade work. One hope is that the LHC, a machine that smashes protons together, can find evidence of a fifth […]
99% of Swiss emergency sirens pass the test
Every year, Switzerland tests its apocalyptic-sounding sirens on the first Wednesday of February. This year it was done on 2 February 2022 at 13:30. The tests finished at 14:00 for general sirens, and 15:00 for flood sirens. If an alarm sounds outside of these times it is not a test. This year’s test revealed that […]
Nespresso capsules cannot be protected, says highest Swiss court
The shape of the Nespresso coffee capsules is ordinary and unmemorable, according to Switzerland’s highest court, reported RTS. In Switzerland, inventions are protected for 20 years. After that they become part of the public domain and can be copied by anyone. Trademarked brands on the other hand last for 10 years with the possibility of […]
Swisscom network down for most of Switzerland this week
At 11:20am on Tuesday 3 August 2021, Swisscom’s network went down for 45 minutes, according to Fing, a network monitoring service. The outage stretched across nearly all of Switzerland’s highly populated plateau as well as the most southern part of the canton of Ticino, affecting most of the company’s customers – see image below. According […]
Europe’s first hyperloop opens in Switzerland
Engineers at EPFL’s DESL lab, working in association with EPFL spin-off Swisspod, have built a Hyperloop test track on the Lausanne campus in Switzerland. They will use the loop – a large vacuum tube for ultra-high-speed travel – to test a linear induction motor, an electric motor that can produce a levitation effect. Hyperloops, viewed […]
Switzerland locked out of EU research project
On 14 July 2021, Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation reported that it had been told by the European Commission that Switzerland will be treated as a non-associated third country in the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. This means that Switzerland can only participate in limited ways. It can put forward […]
Swiss anti-5G initiative fails to reach enough signatures
To launch a referendum in Switzerland, organisers must collect 100,000 signatures within 18 months. The organisers of an initiative aimed at making telecommunication companies legally responsible for any damage caused by mobile phone technology managed to collect only 92,000 signatures by the 3 July 2021 deadline, 8,000 short of the 100,000 signatures required for a […]
