April 6, 2017
Rubik’s cube computers analyses
Researchers make the claim that any scrambled cube can be solved in 20 moves or less. It’s something that has been studied for years. Google’s supercomputers are able to make very fast calculations by testing for solutions by running algorithms.
Rubik’s cube computers are Google computers used to make calculations relating to the cube.These Google computers are able to achieve results in a few weeks that would take a normal home PC to achieve in about 30 years.
Rubik’s Cube computers
Algorithms and results
You can see the difference. A group of American and European mathematicians used the Google supercomputers to develop an algorithm to show that any scrambled Rubik’s Cube could be solved in 20 moves or less.
During this experiment they tested a large number of possible cube positions. There are a possible 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 positions of the Cube. The modern Google supercomputers were not able to check all these positions of the Cube individually.
Rubik’s cube computers
Instead these Cube positions were split into 2.2 billion sets of positions , each of which could be solved in about 20 seconds. The number of sets was then reduced by about a factor of 40 by symmetry arguments and ndash: basically, it doesn’t matter what way round in space the Cube is, and mirror images can be discounted.
The researchers estimate there are about 100 million Cube positions that can be solved in 20 moves. This is only their estimation and so it is not a guaranteed result.
Their experiment wasn’t aimed at getting the best results but only for solutions of less than 20. Since the invention of the Cube in 1974 mathematicians have been working to solve it.
Rubik’s Cube solving facts
It is known for a fact that the maximum amount of moves required to solve any scrambled Cube is larger than 18 and below 52. After learning the Rubik’s Cube ,I discovered it took an average of about 120 moves to solve it.
The method I used to solve it was called The Long Layer Method. At one time at least one fifth of the world’s population had played with a Rubik’s Cube. Today many National and International competitions are held worldwide.
Nobody has ever solved a Rubik’s Cube in as low as 20 moves in competition. Some competitors are even able to solve the cube with their feet.
Rubik’s Cube computers
Researchers now hope to analyse the minimum amount of moves to solve from any position of a 4 x 4 Rubik’s Cube.Rubik’s cube computers will be used to analyse moves to solve many other bigger cubes in the future.
Rubik’s cube computers
Conclusion
There have been many in depth studies of solving the Cube. Researchers are gaining more knowledge all the time about solving the Cube.