Rubik's Cube Solution

[fog]

If you haven't seen the article below then have a guess at the answer to this question first:

The Rubik's Cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible positions.  What is the most number of moves needed to solve the puzzle from any position?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Answer: 20

Linky

Personally I don't care that they spent 35 CPU years finding the solutions, I don't believe them because my brain can't handle that answer.

[T_M_C]

Cool.

I was never able to fully solve the cube.    Only 1 or 2 sides at most.

I was intrigued by the statement of 35 cpu years worth of processing.  No idea what that means.

TMC

[donny]

I was intrigued by the statement of 35 cpu years worth of processing.  No idea what that means.

The writer of that article got that a bit wrong I think.
The original press release said that one Intel four-core, 2.8-GHz Nehalem chip-based desktop computer would need 35 years (1.1 billion seconds) to solve the problem. That makes more sence. :p

[fog]

Yeah that's how I read it.

I can still do the cube although there's nothing particularly clever about it as you just need to know a few different sequences of moves.  Learning that actually spoilt my enjoyment of the cube as a kid.

[donny]

yeah, i know those few moves.
but that is really the most inoptimal way to solve it. (other than doing randomly)
i still tried to find shortcuts after learing the moves.