oing it already, and on a scale so
gargantuan that we could never hope nor desire to approach it. Three
million tons of matter go into that colossal furnace every second of
time, and out of that comes two and a half decillion ergs of energy.
With a total of two and a half million billion billion billions of ergs
to draw on, man will have nothing to worry about for a good many years
to come! That represents a flood of power vaster than man could
comprehend. Why try to release any more energy? We have more than we can
use; we may as well tap that vast ocean of power.

"There is one thing that prevents us getting it out, the law of
probability. That's why Dad mentioned loaded dice, for dice, as you
know, are the classical example of probability when they aren't loaded.
Once they are loaded, the law still holds, but the conditions are now so
changed that it will make the problem quite different."

Arcot paused, frowning, then resumed half apologetically, "Excuse the
lecture--but I don't know how else to get the thought across. You are
familiar with the conditions in a liter of helium gas in a container--a
tremendous number of molecules, each dashing along at several miles a
second, and an equal number dashing in the opposite direction at an
equal speed. They are so thickly packed in there, that none of them can
go very far before it runs into another molecule and bounces off in a
new direction. How good is the chance that all the molecules should
happen to move in the same direction at the same time? One of the old
physicists of Einstein's time, a man named Eddington, expressed it very
well:

'If an army of monkeys were playing on typewriters they
might write all the books in the British Museum. The
chance of their doing so is decidedly more favorable
than the chance that all the molecules in a liter of
gas should move in the same direction at the same
time.'

The very improbability of this chance is the thing that is making our
problem appear impossible.

"But similarly it would be improbable--impossible according to the law
of chance--to throw a string of aces indefinitely. It is
impossible--unless some other force influences the happening. If the
dice have bits of iridium stuck under the six spots, they will throw
aces. Chance makes it impossible to have all the molecules of gas move
in the same direction at the same time--unless we stack the chances. If
we can find some way to influence th