Quantum Vacuum Virtual Plasma
I don't understand the things you do, and you therefore may represent an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.
I don't understand the things you do, and you therefore may represent an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.
This comic is a reference to the then-recent news of a microwave thruster which allegedly produced thrust without expelling any propellant or microwaves, a violation of conservation of momentum. This type of thruster would provide delta velocity without conventional limits. After researchers hooked their device up to a measurement apparatus in an air-filled stainless-steel chamber, applied RF input and measured changes in the apparatus, their interpretation of the results as a tiny thrust explainable under the moniker of "quantum vacuum virtual plasma" was at best controversial. In 2021, physicists at the Dresden University of Technology published a definitive analysis of their own past experiments and those of others, showing that all measured thrust could be explained by and reproduced via outside forces including heat warping of the measurement devices. Like the faster-than-light neutrino experiment, this did not pan out, and physics was not overturned.
The title of the comic directly refers to this hypothetical new physics mechanism of interacting with the "quantum vacuum virtual plasma," a combination of physics words that don't normally go together.
The first part of the comic has Megan commenting on how the engine was, in layman's terms, "twitching," and states that with that much power she'd expect something more forceful. "Twitching" is an expected outcome for various complex systems, including biological ones, when arbitrarily large amounts of electric or microwave power is injected. The last panel is a joke about the scientific method, where equivalence between twitching and the hypothetical new physics is pooh-poohed, because Megan was not previously revealed to operate by the principle of "quantum vacuum virtual plasma," to which Megan responds that she is a complex entity and very well might have new physics inside her.
The title text suggests that the authors of the NASA paper subscribe to the principle that unexpected behaviors of complex systems should best be explained by invoking new physics rather than by making a detailed study of the complexities of the system. This runs contrary to generally accepted approach in science.