A cabrio to fly up to Stanserhorn: world novelty made in Switzerland!

Bored of cropped panorama in windowed cable-cars? Claustrophobic? Looking for new sensations? Then, the new cabrio cable-car from Stans up to Stanserhorn, close to Lucern, is what you need to test. We did it this weekend and here are some pictures to share with you this joyful new way to fly mountains up. To climb down we used our feet on the easy 5 hour-long track number 4: you find the GPS tracking here. Enjoy!

The Higgs boson for dummies (like me) and some questions for nerds (like you)

Matter is made of electrons, protons and neutrons.
Proton and neutrons are made up of quarks: all quarks are “fermions”.
Electrons (charged) and neutrinos (uncharged) are “leptons”

Force is made of bosons, e.g. the boson called photon is the particle “carrying” light and involved in electromagnetic force.

Bosons, leptons and fermions do not require to have mass to exist. However, matter has mass, or no gravity would exist between masses. Also light has mass and is bent by gravity.

So, where do bosons, leptons and fermions get their massess?

The existance of a new boson was recently confirmed by the LHC at Cern: the Higgs boson.

Higgs bosons permeate the universe: the universe is a field of Higgs bosons. When other bosons, leptons and fermions pass through such field of Higgs they differently decelerate depending on their energy, and acquire a mass.

- Without Higgs field, would matter (particle with mass) exist at all?
- Where does the mass of Higgs bosons come from?
- Without Higgs field, what would be the speed of light?
- Are black holes made up of concentration peaks of Higs bosons?
- Is the Higgs field instead constant through the universe?
- Can we pump Higgs bosons like air through a jet engine to travel through space?
- If Higgs bosons have their own mass, do they feel gravity and accumulate close to big masses?
- Without an initial big bang, would bosons, leptons and fermions acquire their masses through the Higgs field?
- If the expansion of the Universe will end, will also matter stop to exist as no particles will hit Higgs bosons?

I have no background but a lot of curiosity

Hagelsturm, Katastrophe in Zürich 1-07-2012

Watch the pictures here

We woke up today because of the hail bombarding Zurich. Wind and hail destroyed plants and cars and flowers. The chlorophyll smell permeates the air. We feel like in a war zone. Horrible.