Giant Rubik’s Cube Floats To Celebrate Creator’s 70th Birthday – VIDEO

The Cube has crossed every border and sold nearly 500 million copies. According to wikipedia.com, the original (3×3×3) Rubik’s Cube has eight corners and twelve edges. There are 8! (40,320) ways to arrange the corner cubes. Seven can be oriented independently, and the orientation of the eighth depends on the preceding seven, giving 37 (2,187) possibilities. There are 12!/2 (239,500,800) ways to arrange the edges, since an even permutation of the corners implies an even permutation of the edges as well. (When arrangements of centres are also permitted, as described below, the rule is that the combined arrangement of corners, edges, and centres must be an even permutation.) Eleven edges can be flipped independently, with the flip of the twelfth depending on the preceding ones, giving 211 (2,048) possibilities.

{8! \times 3^7 \times (12!/2) \times 2^{11}} = 43,252,003,274,489,856,000
which is approximately 43 quintillion.

based on article of szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu
by GAnina

Source: http://www.szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu/