Hot Rod

It’s bird, it’s a plane… no, it’s a German engineer’s idea of the car of tomorrow. Swiss-based Peter Maskus has designed the Acabion GTBO, a cross between a Formula One racecar and a fighter jet that looks like nothing out of Detroit, with a price tag to match: SFr3 million ($2.66 million). For that, the [...]

Swiss government gets friendly

Internet users can get virtually, albeit unofficially, closer to Switzerland’s cabinet thanks to the social networking website Facebook. An economics student from Neuchâtel in the western part of the country set up the seven ministers’ profiles on the site, a move that has yet to draw a reaction from the government. Bertil Suter says that [...]

The dream of Piccard-us

Swiss adventurer, shrink and family man Bertrand Piccard has finally presented a model of his solar plane after four years of research. Solar Impulse is supposed to travel around the world day and night using the sun as its only power source. Piccard, who along with co-pilot Brian Jones, was the first to make [...]

Swatch boss seeks creative prop from Clooney

Swatch chairman Nicolas G. Hayek says Hollywood star George Clooney will sit on the board of a new company that is to develop clean energy systems in Switzerland. Hayek, who will be chairman of the company, said he had hesitated between Clooney and former US vice-president Al Gore for a board seat but plumped for [...]

Defusing a ticking time bomb

Swiss researchers have come to the help of the Rwanda’s government. Methane and carbon dioxide deep in Lake Kivu threaten local populations with a potentially lethal gas eruption. If these gases were destabilised by an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, people could be poisoned, much in the same way it happened at Cameroon’s Lake Nyos [...]

Swiss to design solar sub

Are the Swiss edging closer to cuckoo land? The latest cunning plan to attract tourists seems to indicate this might be the case. BLS railways and Bern power company BKW are backing the development of the world’s first submarine powered by the sun. An off-the-rack submarine would be upgraded to run off solar power, ie [...]