Solving The Rubik's Cube And a slight diversion about the iPad

[Little Asterisk 1]

I've been incredibly productive posting news here lately, so why not continue in that manner?

 

Because, you might not know, but it's been found out how many rounds (or moves, call it what you would like) you minimally need to solve this puzzle. It's twenty rounds, which has been proven recently by a few cool computers, and with a little help of Google.

 

Up until now, it was thought that you'd need around 18 to 50 moves minimum for the easiest (that's 18) and the hardest (50) starting combination, and the Rubik's cube has around (take a breath here =)) 43.252.003.274.489.856.000 combinations.

 

http://www.cube20.org/

 

P.S. Now that I know two news at once, I felt it wasn't necessary to open two topics at once (and please correct me if I shouldn't be doing it anymore), so I decided to cram up another news here: the iPad already existed 23 years ago!

 

It wasn't functional as "the iPad" today, but it still did exist in the early Star Trek, where they decided to use a touch-screen interface instead of buttons (as most spaceships these days had) to reduce cost. And it basically had the exact function as today's iPad! I tell you, these were some smart people/designers back then!

 

You can read all about this on Arstechnica.com, and here's an image of how it used to look like in Star Trek...:

 

[sheepdog 10]

Now there you go, that's some pretty cool trivia!I just think it's so funny how yesterday's sience fiction is todays reality. Remember Buck Rodgers lazer gun?I can't wait to say "Beam me up Scottie!"