Atom
What's weirder is that muons turned out to be INCREDIBLY cute.
What's weirder is that muons turned out to be INCREDIBLY cute.
Atoms are small.[citation needed] An individual atom generally cannot be seen with the naked eye nor discerned with human hands (of course larger structures made of many atoms can be seen just fine). To try and observe atoms better, the characters in the comic invented a so-called "quantum expander device" that can grow an individual atom large enough to handle with human fingers. Such a device would be a huge advance in modern physics (and possibly quite dangerous) if it existed, but unfortunately/fortunately it does not.
This world-changing advancement in the very foundation of physics turns out to be undercut by the bizarre and repulsive way the expanded atoms behave to human sensibilities. Thus derives the humor: proposing that an individual atom, normally intangible, would actually turn out to have properties very similar of macroscopic objects, in particular slimy lifeforms that human bodies find "gross".
Cueball, holding the atom by the electron cloud, complains that the atom is "weird and wobbly." Although electrons are often depicted as orbiting an atomic nucleus very similarly to how planets orbit the Sun, this is an extremely simplistic model of how the electrons are positioned. Students are often taught a succession of more complex models over several years of schooling. In reality, current understanding of the behavior of electrons is ruled by quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. An electron doesn't have a single exact location relative to the nucleus; rather, its location is probabilistic. It can be considered to be "smeared out", with specific locations in space having higher or lower concentrations. This is often visualized to be similar to how a meteorological cloud can be dense or thin. It's often depicted by showing the shapes of the electron density patterns with varying intensities of color, or densely-packed dots vs. spread-out dots. This is sometimes referred to as the "electron cloud model", though electrons aren't really composed of tiny droplets. A cloud in the sky contains water, and is often assumed to be wet, but could be anything from vapour to ice-crystals. The feel of wetness is also a lot more complicated than we might think. Everybody knows what something wet feels like, but there are no "wetness"-detecting cells in the skin. Apparently the brain uses various clues like temperature and pressure, along with past experiences, to determine when something feels "wet".
Scientists generally wear latex gloves when touching certain subjects of study, certainly those that are expected to be damp, and perhaps Ponytail and Cueball should be doing that here. There are mathematical techniques known as "quantum expanders" which reveal more detail and better understanding about the statistical probabilities of the "quantum cloud". For the purpose of the joke, the science team in the comic created a device that actually expands the atom to a scale that it can be held in one's hands and the electron cloud could be felt. The size of a mid-sized atom can be estimated as between 100 and 200 picometer (full data table). Assuming an iron atom of ~150 pm size, to enlarge it up to a ~60-70 cm size as it is displayed in the comic, one would have to enlarge it by a factor of ca. 4 trillion. Doing the same enlargement with a ~2mm diameter peppercorn would enlarge that seed to a planet rivaling the Earth.
The title text expands on this, claiming that muons, a type of subatomic particle, apparently are "cute" despite ordinarily being subatomic particles with a mean lifetime of 2.2 microseconds, give or take. Muons might be considered cute because they're small — like electrons and tau particles, they are considered to be point phenomena at the quantum level with no practical physical size (at or below subatomic Planck-scale), although possibly that (and the time they last) changes as a function of the quantum expander being applied to them. It might possibly also reference a certain way of pronouncing "muon", which starts with a "mew" sound, which in turn is associated with kittens (and a fairly cute Pokémon).
In reality/practice, touching oversized electrons might not be recommended - as that may result in electric discharges - or protons being "ripped" out of your body and falling on the oversized electron, while normal electrons are "ripped" out of your body and scattered elsewhere (assuming that the oversized electron has proportionately bigger attraction and repulsion compared to normal-sized particles, which is not clear from the comic). In other words - you could be disintegrated and electrocuted, and a giant explosion will occur. Oversized electrons may also behave like piles of densely packed electrons. Oversizing a proton could also be dangerous for roughly same reasons - except this time, electrons wold fall on oversized proton, while normal protons would get scattered. Presumably, it's advisable to practice Quantum Expanding with neutrons instead, as it shouldn't react as violently to normal-sized particles.
However, a free neutron decays with a mean lifetime of about 14 minutes, converting part of its mass to 0.78 MeV energy. If the neutron was scaled up to the mass of a tennis ball (rather than remain the same mass, only larger), it would weigh about 57 grams. If that means that the decay energy is scaled up by the same factor, it would release about 25 orders of magnitude more energy upon decay: 1kT TNT equivalent or half the force of the 2020 Beirut explosion.
Upscaling muons or quarks to the size of watermelons may be utterly disastrous - even more so than packed electrons - as they may be the very foundation of the laws of physics; potentially, it may destroy the entire Universe. On top of that, upscaling quarks to the size of watermelons sounds like it could ruin color symmetry - as two quarks are now left without the third quark, and the big quark is now alone. That was explained in HPtMoR chapter 119 and a particularly munchkinish build of World of Darkness vampire mad scientist. Possibly, such destructive capacity of oversized muons (despite their "cuteness") may be part of the joke - as a fairly cute Pokémon in question was a powerful "legendary Pokemon".