BBC Online
Image: athos[hun]
The ultimate solution to the Rubik’s cube has come closer thanks to hours of number crunching on a supercomputer. The research has proved that a Rubik’s cube can be returned to its original state in no more than 26 moves.
The supercomputer took 63 hours to crank out the proof which goes one better than the previous best solution. The two computer scientists behind the research project believe that with more work they could push the move count even lower.
It took some smart thinking by graduate student Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman from Northeastern University in Boston to come up with the proof because cranking through the 43 billion billion possible Rubik’s cube positions would take too long even for a supercomputer. Instead, the scientists used a two-step technique in their calculations. Read more…
