You’ve probably fiddled around with a Rubik’s Cube before, scrambling its colors and forever leaving its six faces impure, since there’s no way you can get it back to how it looked when you bought it without peeling the stickers off and re-applying (quick tip: loosen the glue with a hairdryer, it’s much easier that way). Maybe you know somebody who can solve a Rubik’s Cube in a few minutes, or heck, maybe you can even do it yourself.
We bet you can’t do it in under five seconds, though. The previous world record holder, a 14-year-old Lucas Etter, did it in 4.9 seconds last year, and while his feat was impressive, it’s no longer the greatest our planet has ever seen, as just recently, a 20-year-old Dutch man by the name of Mats Valk, who is so renowned for his Rubik’s Cube-solving skills that he has his own Wikipedia page, just solved one in an astounding 4.74 seconds. For those doing the math at home, that’s less than 4.75 seconds.His solve looked as legitimate as it could possibly be: The jumbled cube was revealed to him, he looked it over for a few seconds, presumably to observe patterns and plan a course of action, then, timing his run using a cup-stacking placemat, solved it in less time than it took to read this sentence. Sure, it helps that his Rubik’s Cube is a high-end edition that uses internal magnets for smooth rotation, but he’s still our best chance to defeat the robots were the fate of humanity to ever come down to a Rubik’s Cube face-off in a bizarre and sad twist of fate.
Featured image: Sonny Abesamis/Flickr