There's probably an error bar mentioned in the paper that was left out of the BBC article. Still, it's only 2 significant digits, so it's not even very precise.

Actually, this recent study claims that in the years 2005-2011, contribution from melting ice was 3 times as high as thermal expansion of the oceans: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/jou...

Of course, there's more than just Antarctic ice melting, but more importantly, it is likely that the melting rate will accelerate as the planet keeps warming.

I believe that in your estimate of the speed of human workers on Mars, you forgot to allocate for the time it would take to get them there alive and well, including the development of a landing module, habitat, an exploration vehicle, and optionally a return rocket. And of course, a big rocket to get all that stuff to Mars and land it on the surface without breaking it.

Maybe they should consider meta moderating ?

Robotic exploration is several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier. It's also much quicker.

Can you suggest a $1.5 billion project that would cure the Earth of disease or fix other global issues ?

For new matter that interacts with common matter, it would require more energy than current particle accelerators can produce, otherwise we would have already found it.

With typical flashlight wavelengths, there's not enough energy to create particles. Waiting a few hours isn't going to help.

If Uber wanted, they could keep the barrier high.

I don't think you have the same definition of theory. Here's the one I use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

A hypothesis is an explanation for observation that has not been tested thoroughly. This fails the definition on two accounts: there has not been an observation yet (it's just a proposal for an experiment), and the theory behind it (QED) has been tested thoroughly. So, it's a prediction of an already well-tested theory. And because QED involves integrating over all possible events, it's hard to imagine how QED could be shown to confirm so well with experimental results, if it didn't also correctly represent this type of energy -> matter conversion.

It is part of the theory of quantum electro dynamics, and even if it has been demonstrated in this form, the virtual possibility must already be accounted for in other quantum calculations that have been verified in experiments. Also, the reverse effects have been demonstrated before, and according to theory these effects are fully reversible. It would be a huge shock if a properly conducted experiment would fail to produce the expected results.

The goal is to verify our understanding of quantum physics, not to create matter.

They are planning to create an electron/positron pair. Also, it is extremely unlikely you could create anything entirely new with currently available energy levels.