Monkeys will never write Hamlet. A famous theory debunked?
The right number of monkeys, given enough time, could write Shakespeare’s Hamlet. At least that’s what the infinite monkey theory says. However, recent research shows that this claim can be thrown into the trash.
The thought experiment of the infinite monkey theory tells us that the accumulation of random events can lead to something of great significance. However, the latest research by mathematicians from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia shows that great works do not arise by chance. How did they get there?
But time is running out
Australian scientists studied the above-mentioned monkeys. After analyzing the numbers, they showed that Even if animals were immortal, the estimated lifetime of the universe is not long enough for our anthropoid cousins to be able to accidentally write Hamlet by tapping on random keys. This was indicated by the probability calculated by mathematicians. The study involved translating the theory into a finite number of monkeys and time. However, animals still had access to the entire history of the universe.
What were the results? According to sciencealert.com, which cites a scientific article in Franklin Open, a single chimpanzee typing on a 30-key keyboard has a 5 percent chance of coining the word “bananas” in its lifetime. Reproducing all 884,647 words from Shakespeare’s works by 200,000 chimpanzees over the course of a few years? The chances of such an event are almost zero. The probability is 6.4 x 10 to the power of -7448254. Even if these monkeys accidentally wrote the simple adventures of Kitty Cat during the universe, it would be a great happiness.
As mathematicians point out, even with faster typing speeds or an increase in the chimpanzee population, these animals will be able to accidentally write more than just trivial stories. Perhaps it would be possible in infinite time, but according to current knowledge we will not have such a thing. Currently, everything indicates that we are in the last phase of the development of the Universe. Dark matter is gaining an increasingly significant role and may ultimately lead to the end of this story. So for monkeys to write Hamlet would be something of a miracle with almost zero chance of occurring.
