TIL that it is HIGHLY likely that in all the times on our planet someone has randomly shuffled a standard deck of cards (52), there has never been a case of the cards ending up in the same order as a previous shuffle
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/d...ways-arrange-deck-cards-there-are-atoms-earth
It seems unbelievable, but there are somewhere in the range of 8x1067 ways to sort a deck of cards. That’s an 8 followed by 67 zeros. To put that in perspective, even if someone could rearrange a deck of cards every second of the universe’s total existence, the universe would end before they would get even one billionth of the way to finding a repeat.
From another source:
https://brobible.com/life/article/deck-cards-total-number-order-cominations/
If you were to shuffle a deck of 52 cards and lay them out the possible order combinations are practically endless. The total number of combinations is a factorial of 52, or 52!, which translates to 8.06e+67, a number that means absolutely nothing to me.
I’ve seen a really good explanation of how big 52! actually is.
Set a timer to count down 52! seconds (that’s 8.0658×1067 seconds)
Stand on the equator, and take a step forward every billion years
When you’ve circled the earth once, take a drop of water from the Pacific Ocean, and keep going
When the Pacific Ocean is empty, lay a sheet of paper down, refill the ocean and carry on.
When your stack of paper reaches the sun, take a look at the timer.
The 3 left-most digits won’t have changed. 8.063×1067 seconds left to go. You have to repeat the whole process 1000 times to get 1/3 of the way through that time. 5.385×1067 seconds left to go.
So to kill that time you try something else.
Shuffle a deck of cards, deal yourself 5 cards every billion years
Each time you get a royal flush, buy a lottery ticket
Each time that ticket wins the jackpot, throw a grain of sand in the grand canyon
When the grand canyon’s full, take 1oz of rock off Mount Everest, empty the canyon and carry on.
When Everest has been leveled, check the timer.
There’s barely any change. 5.364×1067 seconds left. You’d have to repeat this process 256 times to have run out the timer.