Random Occurrence of Recognizable Images

I find the number infinity to be fascinating—especially the fact that given unlimited time, all things are possible.

The impetus for this prize started with a discussion I was having with someone regarding Brian Green's book on string theory. He mentioned something along the lines that if one left a ball on a table, eventually, the structures of both items would lineup in such a way that the ball would pass through the table. The caveat here, however, was that the time required to for the event to happen could be billions of billions of billions of years.

My friend and I started discussing how, by the same logic, somewhere out in the infinite reaches of the universe over an infinite amount of time, a perfect replica of a Volkswagen Beetle will materialize. Again, the time required is enormous, but matter is rearranging itself, and sometime, just by chance, it'll arrange itself into a Beetle.

That led me to think about computer screens. I imagined myself in a white room taking digital photos of a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling. I could shoot 360° around them and then move my camera up a few inches and repeat it. I could even rotate the camera 360° while in each position. After doing one whole pass of the bananas, I could step back a foot and repeat the whole process. I could then change the color of room and repeat the whole process yet again. The number of unique photos would be enormous. I could then repeat the process with two bunches of banana, or a potted fern, or a orange teddy bear that's missing one eye.

Each one of these photos would be distinct and viewable on my computer monitor. That got me to thinking about digital photos in general. Anything that could be digitally photographed could be displayed on a monitor. (Of course, the limited resolution of a camera and monitor means that the subtleties between images can't be too small.) What if instead of giving a monitor an image to display, the monitor just started displaying random static. At some point, just by chance, over an infinite amount of time, the monitor would display an image of the Mona Lisa. And if it could randomly display that, why couldn't it display a photographic image of me sitting at my computer right now typing this. A digital camera could capture it, so shouldn't the monitor be able to display it?

Now, before anyone asks how many controlled substances are drifting through my blood stream, I have a larger purpose for proposing this challenge. I think that the failure of so many people to grasp the vastness of the universe and its possibilities has resulted in a failure of imagination and the need to rely on untestable alternatives.

My hope for this prize (and I know that the odds of finding a match to any of the control images is slim) it that it will provide a concrete proof for the old "million monkeys at a million typewriters" saying.