ball-2
Explanation
This comic depicts an interaction between a human and an alien named Zortran. The human throws a ball and excitedly says "Watch this!" as it bounces. The alien observes the ball appearing and disappearing, and when the human says "behind your back," the alien responds with existential horror: "It doesn't really. There is no ball. Only fluctuations in quantum fields."
The human insists that "object permanence is real," but the alien -- who apparently perceives reality at a quantum mechanical level -- "cannot stand things that are not there." The comic plays on the concept of object permanence, the developmental milestone (studied by Piaget) where infants learn that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.
The humor works by imagining an alien species that is intellectually advanced but has never developed object permanence -- or rather, has correctly understood quantum field theory and therefore finds the human concept of persistent solid objects to be a naive illusion. It is a clever inversion: humans consider object permanence a sign of cognitive maturity, but from a sufficiently advanced physics perspective, it might be considered a useful cognitive shortcut that obscures the true nature of reality. The alien's distress at a simple ball game is both funny and philosophically provocative.