What happened before the big bang is irrelevant. It's philosophy, not science. We can only ever study what happened after the big bang (though we have a damn good understanding already from a tiny fraction of a second after onwards).
Also, the Heat Death is not going to happen, that scenario is scientifically ruled out since many years.

A very unfortunate thing to say by that scientist. As a particle physicist, he should know we already have CP violation in the Standard Model that explains the matter-antimatter asymmetry partly; we just don't observe enough of it.

How does this get modded insightful!? It's meaningless junk, just some science words linked together grammatically in a sentence, but without utter meaning. Are you like the SCIgen of Slashdot comments?

Sources could not confirm whether taking the taxi would land you on an Alp meadow, or among the kangaroos.

A fan of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"! Good luck with that!

I would disagree on one point, that it was expected to find a Higgs boson, and nothing else new. This situation makes the hierarchy problem a real and serious thing. Most theories out there expect something new to appear near the weak scale, i.e. within reach of the LHC.
The beautiful thing about the diphoton excess which is now gone is that it was such a weakish-scale new physics signal nobody had been expecting. Alas.

The CMS experiment which I am on - only one of the several LHC experiments - went to just this conference being mentioned with ~80 new analyses. These analyses are measurements of particle properties to a greater precision, or explorations of previously unknown territory. Many of these will later be turned into papers and add on the already >400 journal papers by our experiment. Even neglecting the Higgs boson discovery, the scientific output and acquired new knowledge from the LHC has already been immense.

No, gracht is not restricted to urban setting. We use it also for any little creek dug (i.e. man-made) alongside the road, a fierce obstacle when drunk on foot or in the car... Where I live in Flanders we have them alongside almost every other road.

Last year I attended the ICHEP conference in Valencia, Spain, the largest and probably most important conference in the field of high-energy physics.

The keynote speaker, Francois Englert, noble prize physics 2013, couldn't come, and rather last minute Alan Guth from MIT was upgraded to that main talk. He's one of the fathers of ithe theory of inflation, and with the BICEP results around a fitting match for a keynote talk.

He gave an excellent first half of his talk. After that, he wandered into the multiverse, unfortunately. To me, and to many others, we had left physics, and entered philosophy. After the talk the question, which I have no doubt many had in mind, was readily asked: what about the experimental testability of it all. The answer was quite unsatisfactory, unfortunately.

IAAPP, and I have trouble parsing your sentences.
Can you give a reference for what you're trying to say?

Tachyons are nasty negative mass states; really just weird mathematical solutions. You would expect the Spanish inquisition more than the observation of a tachyon anytime soon.

TFS doesn't mention the word vacuum, anywhere.

Travelling faster than light in a medium is not that hard. The blue light in the water surrounding nuclear reactors is a result of neutrons doing exactly that: they travel faster than light in the water. Nothing fancy.

> The Eurozone nations have opted for a degree of financial integration that the UK doesn't want or need.
> Obviously that hasn't worked out very well recently, at least for the economically stronger EU nations.

You mean, it hasn't worked out well at all for the economically weaker, right? They are trapped in a system of expensive debt in hands of the richer out of which they can't devaluate themselves, since they share the same currency.

Coordinator: Crucifixion?
Mr. Cheeky: Er, no, freedom actually.
Coordinator: What?
Mr. Cheeky: Yeah, they said I hadn't done anything and I could go and live on an island somewhere.
Coordinator: Oh I say, that's very nice. Well, off you go then.
Mr. Cheeky: No, I'm just pulling your leg, it's crucifixion really.
Coordinator: [laughing] Oh yes, very good. Well...
Mr. Cheeky: Yes I know, out of the door, one cross each, line on the left.

The parent said "to learn *well*", and (s)he was right. English is for many people easy to get started with, but it's really hard to master well.