So if I understand, it may be entirely possible to make an item out of energy, due to how various different particles are created by energy?

Yes :)
To emphasise the point, in particle physics, the mass of particles is given by their equivalent energy in the above equation - an electron is 911 keV, a proton is 938 MeV, and so on :)

The "discovery of gravitons" is really a short-hand way of saying that you are replacing relativity (gravity is the only fundamental force that is modelled using a classical field theory) by a Quantum Field theory. The graviton is simply the name given to the force-carrier of a quantised gravitational force model.

The "discovery of gravitons" would hence not shake up relativity, it would by definition mean that it has been replaced. By a completely different form of theory. Nobel prizes would be won. Grand Unified Theories would be available. And so on.

I can't remember the exact theory, my QFT course (taught by Mageijo) was a long time ago, but there's a mathematical proof that says that energy conservation implies that all physics theories should in principle be Gauge theories, i.e. quantised rather than classical field. So relativity is clearly incorrect, they just don't know what to replace it with. So gravitons are assumed to exist, we just haven't observed them yet as their quantum is smaller than our gravimeters can detect.

Thank you for your contribution, Mr. Morgan.

Hah great quote, especially taking into account the fact that I just played AC for the first time a couple of weeks ago!
The quote about research grants is an interesting, but nevertheless a reoccurring one. My brother is currently doing a PhD in fluid mechanics with one of the world's leading professors on the topic. Interestingly enough, the professor apparently quite often spends most of his day not on research, but on pursuing funding. In comparison to the US though, funding for universities and research here in the UK is notoriously lacking.

Essentially, the issue is that there will only be funding where there will be returns on said funding. Malaria in itself is not the most sophisticated disease, but there is no interest in investment in it due to the lack of purchasing power of customers.
The additional problem with research in fundamental physics is the lack of opportunities for patenting, which obviously leads to no returns on investment.

That being said, my brother perhaps receives monthly projects from private companies asking him to research something particular. The remuneration isn't great, but it's more than plenty for the average PhD student.

???

You sir, have presented the best idea, ever. +1

Only problem I see is finding a weapon dealer dumb enough to sell to them...seeing as how most of them would probably be of such low intelligence that Hawking would probably blow them away the moment they sat down on their contraption similar to Terminator 1 gunshop scene.

This is unfortuantely very common, and what put me off staying in academia - the constant applying for funding, with its complete lottery as to results. I've not seen my Professor in a technical meeting for 3 months, and this is true for most of his PhD students. His just-starting PhD students are really up a creek without a paddle.

Nyyaaahh... I personally wouldn't call it incorrect. More like incomplete. Relativity today is about the same as Newtonian physics just after Einstein proposed his theories - not at all incorrect, more like clearly not the whole picture. The same goes for quantum field theory and the standard model; there is something here, but we can't quite make sense of it yet.

As a way to visualize the situation: we got a picture of something, we know this something works, but we don't know why. Let's say the resolution of the picture is too poor to make out the finer details.
What we need now is a higher resolution; a unified field that incorporates both quantum field theory and relativity in a common, smooth framework where neither theory conflicts with the other. This is what quantum gravity and the graviton is really all about; to explain how gravity works on the smallest of scales and outwards; thus hopefully unify it with the other forces of nature, something we have not managed to do yet beyond hypothesis. What is important to remember is that any unified field theory will still incorporate relativity just like relativity incorporates Newton's theories. It works great when we need it, so there's no point in discarding it.

Coming up with bombs that can destroy the world and have been used to end a world war and ensure another one hasn't broken out for 70 years in a world that had the last two only 20 years apart is pretty important, as irrelevant theorizing goes.

Maybe not Justin Bieber and Jackass III important, but still ...