12 ASTRONOMY • DECEMBER 2021
STRANGE UNIVERSE
Nearly
nine years
ago, this
page explored ran-
domness and its
apparent ability to
generate the
universe around us
(see my Ja nua r y
2013 column, “It’s
random”). Since
then, science arti-
cles have continued
to cite chance —
such as a planet
happening to sit a
specific distance
from its parent star
— as the presumed
mechanism for life
on exoplanets.
It’s tempting to attribute natural phenomena to
chance because we already see it operating widely. For
example, it’s how evolution works. The problem is that
few people seem to understand the limits of chance. I
think it’s time to give this subject a deeper look.
Let’s expand on some of my previous examples:
Consider putting eight books on a shelf. How
likely is it that their titles will appear in
alphabetical order? You’ll find the odds by
multiplying 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 —
pronounced “eight factorial” and written as 8!
— which equals 40,320. That’s how many ways
eight books can be arranged. But only one of
those ways puts them in alphabetical order.
This will surprise most of us. Who would
expect such long odds? After hastily putting
up eight volumes and noticing they’re perfectly alpha-
betical, it might seem more plausible that we’d witnessed
a 1-in-50 curiosity than a 1-in-40,000 miracle.
More important than such statistical surprises is
whether we apply randomness correctly. Scientists
occasionally argue an event should be studied because
it’s so unusual by committing the statistical felony of
calculating its likelihood after it has happened. We
might say the Orion Nebula’s gull-wing pattern is a
1-in-a-million phenomenon. But those odds are valid
on ly i f we c a lc u lated t hem before t he nebu la’s creat ion.
Once M42 exists, its chances of looking as it does
become 100 percent! It’s no longer unlikely in the least.Perhaps the most famous statistical illustration of
randomness is the monkeys-and-typewriters thought
experiment. If a million monkeys typed randomly on
a million keyboards for a million years, they’d suppos-
edly create the Encyclopaedia Britannica. True?
We figured it out on this page nearly a decade ago.
But we limited the task to creating the opening line of
Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael.” Now, keyboards offer
many places to push — manual typewriters have 58
keys. So, to create Moby Dick’s 16 opening characters
(including spaces and punctuation), how many random
tries are needed?
Given 58 keys, it would be 58 x 58 x 58 x 58...
16 times over, or 16.4 trillion quadrillion attempts. But
remember we have a million monkeys working; let’s
say they faultlessly type 45 words a minute so the com-
bi ned ke y st roke s i n e ach at tempt t a ke ju st fou r second s.
How much time before there’s a 50-50 chance that one
monkey finally types “Call me Ishmael”? The answer
is 2,100 trillion years. That’s 153,000 times the age of
the universe.
So, the monkeys/typewriters thing is bogus. Even a
million simians typing furiously would never even
reproduce one book’s short opening line.
My cautionary point nine years ago and again today
is to avoid overly crediting the power of random causa-
tion, whether through monkeys or molecular motion.
We may observe complex earthly phenomena such as
brain architecture, marvel at the exquisitely life-
f r iend ly va lues of doz ens of phy sic a l const a nt s such a s
the strong force, or even someday find alien life and
ponder how it arose. But we shouldn’t lazily assume
their explanation is randomness operating over a long
period of time. In most cases, this supposition is simply
not useful. It seldom advances our knowledge because,
as we’ve seen, we assign it far more potency than it
actually possesses.
Chance is a valid causality method, and a
powerful one. But we need to recognize its
inadequacy when excessive complexity is
involved and more fundamentally guard
against applying it after the fact.
Where does this leave us? At some point
in our lives, we’ve all wondered about the
causality of big issues. Astronomy is peerless
at provoking such torment. If chance is
grossly overused but we also want to avoid religious
explanations, what’s left?
Count me among the many who, when contemplat-
ing this astounding universe, perceive Nature as exhib-
iting some sort of underlying intelligence. We seem
immersed within a mysterious, genius architectural
substrate so deep we haven’t yet begun to poke it with
our clumsy fingers. Alas, even if true, this hypothesis
may be no more helpful to scientific progress than
simply leaving everything ... to chance.Let’s dive deeper into randomness.
Chances are ...
The chances that the
Orion Nebula (M42)
looks exactly as it
does are 100 percent
— if you’re calculating
them today, after it
has already formed.
NASA, ESA, M. ROBBERTO (SPACE
TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE/
ESA) AND THE HUBBLE SPACE
TELESCOPE ORION TREASURY
PROJECT TEAMIt’s tempting
to attribute
natural
phenomena
to chance.
BROWSE THE “STRANGE UNIVERSE” ARCHIVE
AT http://www.Astronomy.com/BermanBY BOB BERMAN
Bob’s recent book,
Earth-Shattering
(Little, Brown and
Company, 2019),
explores the greatest
cataclysms that have
shaken the universe.