Mildly Interesting

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Every shuffle of a deck of cards is most likely unique (europe.pub)

submitted 2 days ago by skepller@lemmy.world to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

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In fact, 99.999999% is an extremely low estimate. The number of ways that a deck of cards can be shuffled is 52! Which is equal to 8065817517094387857166063685640376697528950544088327782400000000000 possibilities.

If you shuffled cards every second from the birth of the universe until now, you still wouldn’t even come close (statistically) to getting the same arrangement twice.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42773245

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[–] drev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

V-Sauce had an incredible video on this, outlining exactly how unfathomably colossal the number 52! actually is. If I remember correctly:

Stand at the equator and set a timer for 52! seconds, press start, then stand still and wait for 1 billion years. Then, take one single step forward, and wait another billion years.

Continue walking at this pace until you've made your way around the Earth and back to your original starting position, then remove one drop of water from the Pacific ocean, and set it aside.

Repeat this process until you've completely emptied the Pacific Ocean drop by drop, then set a single sheet of paper on the ground beside you. Refill the Pacific Ocean again (instantly), and do it all over again.

Continue this process, setting each sheet of paper on top of the last, until the stack of papers reaches the sun. Then tear it all down and do the whole thing over again, 999 more times.

At this point, the timer would be about a third of the way to 0 seconds.

The video continues with an alternative mind-boggling process to kill the rest of the time while you're waiting for the timer to reach 0, which involves dealing yourself 5 cards from a well-shuffled deck once every billion years, and buying a lottery ticket for each royal flush you deal yourself. If that lottery ticket hits the jackpot, you'd (EDIT: throw a grain of sand into the grand canyon, repeating until it's full - forgot this step) then remove 1 ounce of rock from Mount everest, and repeat all of this until Mount Everest is completely leveled.

After doing this 256 more times, then the other two-thirds of the timer will have elapsed, and it would finally reach 0.

That's how long 52! seconds would be.