Quantum Vacuum Virtual Plasma
Quantum Vacuum Virtual Plasma
[Cueball and Megan are walking together in the foreground.] Cueball: Hear about that "impossible" microwave thruster?
[They stop walking and Cueball turns to face Megan.] Megan: Yeah. Let me get this straight — they pumped 20 kilowatts into a box under ambient conditions ...and it only twitched a little ? Cueball: Yeah.
[Zoomed out - they are seen in silhouette walking together again.] Megan: That's surprising. If you pumped 20 kilowatts into me , I'd twitch a lot . Cueball: But you're not pushing on the quantum vacuum. Megan: I might be. I do a lot of things. Cueball: I guess we can't be sure.

This comic is a reference to the recent news of a microwave thruster which allegedly produces 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.  An official statement by NASA's Johnson Space Center is still missing.
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.
[Cueball and Megan are walking together in the foreground.] Cueball: Hear about that "impossible" microwave thruster?
[They stop walking and Cueball turns to face Megan.] Megan: Yeah. Let me get this straight — they pumped 20 kilowatts into a box under ambient conditions ...and it only twitched a little ? Cueball: Yeah.
[Zoomed out - they are seen in silhouette walking together again.] Megan: That's surprising. If you pumped 20 kilowatts into me , I'd twitch a lot . Cueball: But you're not pushing on the quantum vacuum. Megan: I might be. I do a lot of things. Cueball: I guess we can't be sure.
