Posted 09/28/2013 18:00:00

Yeah, it's still a month before Halloween, but my mom suggested this idea and I liked it so much I had to use it.

As for the physics stuff mentioned in this comic, it refers to a particular type of ultralong-range molecule, informally called a trilobite molecule, consisting of two cesium atoms (though other alkali atoms can and have been used for this; the first observation was in rubidium). "Ultralong-range" here is relative, as the atoms are about 100 nanometers apart: huge for a diatomic molecule, but not something you'd refer to in your daily life as "ultralong". The trilobite nickname for it comes from the electronic probability distribution (the source of Chris' costume), which if graphed in the right coordinates, looks like a trilobite fossil.

All this talk about "ultralong-range" stuff may have just inspired me to make another comic about lousy physics pickup lines...