Jim Carey: "I've got to tell you I love reading. I absolutely love reading. I'm a huge reader, and when I pickup something I just can't put it down, you know. Like, quantum physics, that's my favorite.
Conan O'Brien: "Quantum physics?"
Jim Carey: "Yeah."
Conan O'Brien: "Like what are you talking about, like quantum physics? Like what?"
Jim Carey: "I was just reading this incredible paper on the stochastic phase shifting of a parametrically driven electron in a penning trap. And apparently a bi-stability arises dynamically in this specific parametrically driven systems because the phase psi of the electron's steady state oscillation can either have the two values separated by Pi."
Conan O'Brien: "Great, that was incredible. Because, you know, it's funny, what shocks me about an electron in a penning trap is that most amplitude collapses are accompanied by a phase flip, given that the rate of the escape from the attractor depends exponentially on an activation energy E as the diffusion constant D approaches Tn and rho approaches epsilon^(-e/d)."
Jim Carey: "No question there."
Conan O'Brien: "Of course."
Max: "I don't know about that Conan. Have you considered that the parametric driving force excites a nearly resonant electron oscillation at the drive frequency? OMEGAd/3 = OMEGAz + epsilon. It's a classic example of the period doubling that occurs when a linear oscillator is strongly driven."
Jim Carey: "Max, did you just say that the OMEGAd/3 = OMEGAz + epsilon?"
Max: "Yeah"
Conan O'Brien, "Whoa, its actually OMEGAd/2 = OMEGAz + epsilon. Wow, Max you know nothing about quantum physics."
Max: "You're right."
