Renormalization
Applying renormalization to bullies successfully transformed Pete & Pete's Endless Mike into Finite Mike.
Applying renormalization to bullies successfully transformed Pete & Pete's Endless Mike into Finite Mike.
Renormalization is a mathematical toolkit used in quantum field theory and other domains of physics. For example, renormalization techniques allow the replacement of mass and charge values of an electron with other values that reference attributes observed experimentally. Renormalization is presumed to account for unobserved interactions among the things in the system being studied that lead to the state of the renormalized thing being different from what was initially postulated, and it can therefore be considered justified and not a fudge factor. Equations with renormalized quantities reach finite solutions that can be used to do additional work, whereas those without renormalized quantities reach non-finite (infinite) solutions that cannot.
Many common examples of calculations that require renormalization are those related to self-interactions of particles. For example an electron may interact with itself by emitting and re-absorbing a (virtual) photon. A naïve calculation of the “probability” of this event produces an infinite result. Renormalization is used to extract a meaningful finite answer. We find that the true state of an electron at any given time includes a component which corresponds to this emission-and-reabsorption process. There are many interpretations of these results, but one common description is that the electron is repeatedly emitting and reabsorbing a photon, i.e. “hitting itself”.
The comic invokes the commonplace 'stop hitting yourself' trope, in which the bully (Cueball) grabs a body part of the victim and perpetrates an assault with it, while claiming that the victim is engaged in self-harm. Use of this trope references the self-interactions that renormalization is accounting for. Megan's "... Wait" represents her starting to get the idea of renormalization, inspired by Cueball's bullying of the electron, as described in the caption. Another possible interpretation is that the earliest renormalization techniques amounted to attempts by physicists to "bully" electrons into accepting self-descriptions that gave the physicists the answers they sought.
The title text refers to the character "Endless" Mike Hellstrom, from the 1989 TV sitcom The Adventures of Pete & Pete. It links back to renormalization, because renormalization lets you remove infinities to get finite solutions, so in that sense it would turn Endless Mike into Finite Mike.