Typing Monkeys Don’t Have Time to Write Shakespeare

Even a typewriting monkey randomly hitting keys will eventually produce every possible text, including the entire works of Shakespeare, so goes a common example of the power of stochastic sampling. But would the monkey actually be done before the heat death of the universe? According to a new calculation by scientists from the University of Technology in Sydney, the answer is a resounding “no”. They calculate the probability that the monkey would succeed in reproducing the entire works of Shakespeare within 10^100 years (a typical estimate for the arrival of heat death) with approximately 10^-7448255, though it has a pretty good chance to get as far as “I chimp, therefore I am.” In German, we use the saying “Even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain” to describe the same idea, so I think more work is needed. Press release here, paper here.

Check out this video on final theory! For decades, scientists have been looking for a theory of everything, which can combine Einstein’s theories with the standard model while also explaining all masses and interactions within the standard model. In this video I explain why I have become convinced that such a theory does not exist. You can take the quiz here.

You can now create and share your own quizzes on QuizWithIt – for free! Just set up an account and creator profile and you are good to go. Create quizzes to go with websites, videos, blogposts, podcasts, or as standalone. Your audience can support you by subscribing to your content, which allows them to collect points by taking your quizzes. Each quiz has a unique URL, can be embedded into websites or newsletter, and be shared on X, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Happy quizzing!

New Idea to Store Wind Energy Moves Forward

Image: Fraunhofer IEE

The German Fraunhofer IEE has teamed up with the U.S. firm Sperra to pursue a new method of storing energy. If the energy is not directly needed, they use it to pump water out of concrete containers, creating high underpressure. If energy is needed, they let water rush back in and drive a turbine with that. The method lends itself especially to storing offshore wind energy, but can generally be used for any power plant near a big water reservoir. They successfully tested this method with a small prototype in Lake Constance and are now building a bigger one off the coast of South California. The project has been backed with $4 million by the U.S. Department of Energy and €3.4 million by the German government. Press release here.

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New Chip Could Dramatically Speed up AI

Image: Etched

The San Francisco-based startup Etched has unveiled a new chip especially designed for the currently used AI. It’s an Application Specific Integrated Circuit that was physically adapted to use in transformer models and can speed up the most common operations such as matrix multiplications or weighing vectors. The company says they can outperform the currently most commonly used Nvidia chips by a factor 10. The company is not publicly traded. More information here.

Wait, There’s More

How do we know we are not living in a computer simulation? I answered this question for Gizmodo here.

Our podcast “Science with Sabine” is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, and YouTube.