Fat Chance

Scientists have attempted to look at the possibility of proteins formulating spontaneously from amino acids at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and through statistical analysis they came to the conclusion that the possibility of a protein molecule being formulated by chance would be one over ten followed by fifty-six zeros. Now that is an extremely small possibility. How small? Well, this is the analogy which they gave. They said it would be like walking down the street one day and seeing a lottery ticket on the sidewalk, picking up the lottery ticket and discovering that you had won the lottery for that week! But you would also have to do it the second week in a row, and the third week in a row. You would also have to find a winning lottery ticket the fourth week in a row, the fifth week in a row-in fact, every week in a row continuously for one thousand years. That is the possibility of a protein molecule coming into existence by chance.