It’s the middle of summer pipe dream.
Chimpanzees may be able to talk like humans, but they can’t imitate our literary prowess.
Australian scientists have disproved the theory that a monkey could possibly type the works of Shakespeare if it had all the time in the world.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Franklin Open, claims the universe would end before primates wrote the bard’s prose on a typewriter.
The research, led by mathematicians Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta from the University of Technology Sydney, aimed to mathematically examine the infinite monkey theorem – often considered the ultimate test of probability and chance, Science Alert reported .
This thought experiment states that if infinitely many simians have a typewriter and unlimited time, they will end up writing the works of William Shakespeare by pure chance.
“The infinite monkey theorem only considers the infinite limit, with either an infinite number of monkeys or an infinite period of monkey work,” Woodcock explains.
To test whether this theory was bananas, Woodcock’s team examined “the probability that a given string of letters would be typed by a finite number of monkeys over a finite period of time, consistent with estimates of the lifespan of our Universe.
Woodcock and Falletta’s calculations were based on different numbers of “monkeys” ranging from one to 200,000 – the estimated number of chimpanzees on Earth.
According to their calculations, the apes typed on keyboards with varying numbers of keys, hammering at a rate of one keystroke per second for googol years – the estimated time until the projected heat death of the Universe and also inspiration for the search name. Google engine.
By changing the variables, arithmetic geniuses were able to calculate what primates could produce in different windows of time.
What they found wasn’t exactly a storm in a typewriter.
After crunching the numbers, researchers concluded that the universe would end long before Curious George could inadvertently edit the complete works of Shakespeare, reports the Independent.
Even trivial sentences would take forever. For reference, a chimpanzee typing on a 30-key keyboard would have a 5% chance of writing “bananas” in its lifetime.
The probability that they type “I chimpanzee, therefore I am”, rises to about one in 10 million billion billion, according to the study.
When extrapolated to Shakespeare’s scale, the probability of a chimpanzee typing the playwright’s 900,000 words before the apocalypse stands at about 6.4 x 10.-7448254 – or, essentially zero.
“It’s not even one in a million,” Woodcock told New Scientist. “If every atom in the universe was a universe in itself, this still wouldn’t happen.”
In conclusion, science fiction fans can reject any dream of a “Planet of the Apes”-style society of the future where scholarly orangutans recite “Richard III.”
That being said, primates have recently demonstrated very human-like intellectual traits.
Over the summer, scientists discovered that chimpanzees “are capable” of producing sounds that imitate the words they hear from people, dispelling previous studies stating that speech was beyond their “neural circuits.”
