Not enough time in universe for monkeys to pen Shakespeare: study

Paris: If a monkey types randomly at a keyboard for long enough, it will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare. This thought experimen...

Paris: If a monkey types randomly at a keyboard for long enough, it will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.

This thought experiment has long been used to express how an infinite amount of time makes something that is incredibly unlikely -- but still technically possible -- become probable.

But two Australian mathematicians have deemed the old adage misleading, working out that even if all the chimpanzees in the world were given the entire lifespan of the universe, they would "almost certainly" never pen the works of the bard.

The "infinite monkey theorem" has been around for more than a century, though its origin remains unclear. It is commonly attributed to either French mathematician Emile Borel or British anthropologist Thomas Huxley, and some even think the general idea dates back to Aristotle.

For a light-hearted but peer-reviewed study published earlier this week, the two mathematicians set out to determine what happens if generous yet finite limits were placed on the monkey typists.