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Most people are likely familiar with the thought experiment that asserts an unlimited number of monkeys with an unlimited number of typewriters could eventually bang out Shakespeare’s plays, but scientists who took a closer look at the “Infinite Monkey Theorem” have outlined just how unlikely that feat would be.
The “Infinite Monkey Theorem” can be traced back to some of the musings Aristotle rolled around in his head while doing his thing in Ancient Greece, but French mathematician Émile Borel is widely credited with dreaming up that specific twist on the concept of probability toward the start of the 20th century.
In 1913, Borel penned an essay in which he suggested a million monkeys working on typewriters for 10 hours a day for an unlimited amount of time would eventually be able to recreate great works of literature out of sheer randomness.
That eventually evolved into the Infinite Monkey Theorem, with the most common iteration involving an infinite number of monkeys with access to an infinite amount of typewriters being able to replicate the entire body of William Shakespeare’s work if given enough time.
According to Phys.org, a couple of mathematicians at the University of Technology Sydney decided to take a closer look at the Infinite Monkey Theorem in a recently published study that’s somewhat grounded in reality in an attempt to figure out how long it would actually take a bunch of primates to type out Shakespeare entire canon.
The paper revolves around 200,000 chimpanzees (the current estimated global population) with access to a keyboard containing 30 characters hitting one key per second until the predicted death of the universe, which will theoretically cease to exist in approximately 1 googol years.
The authors say there’s only a 5% chance a single chimp would manage to type out “bananas” during its entire lifespan and found there’s a virtually nonexistent chance a group of theoretically immortal monkeys would be able to recreate the approximately 884,647 words that comprise Shakespeare’s works before the universe stops being a thing.
The more you know.