In how many possible states can a Rubik's Cube be?
A Rubik's Cube has a total of 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (43 quintillion) possible states. This number was determined by mathematician Morwen Thistlethwaite using group theory, which is a branch of mathematics that studies symmetry. To put this number into perspective, it's estimated that the number of atoms in the observable universe is around 10^80, while 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 is approximately 4.3 * 10^19, making the number of possible states of a Rubik's Cube incredibly vast.