Rubik's Cube Proven Solvable in 26 Moves

eldavojohn writes: "I've often heard people comment that any configuration (if analyzed long enough) of a Rubik's cube could be solved in less than 20 moves. But the only proof provided by computational math has yielded 27 as the limit ... until now. Researchers at Notheastern University have proven that it is possible in 26 moves by using mathematical group theory with hardware capable of simulating a hundred million moves a second. You might think this a boring or trivial thing to crack through brute force when, in fact, the cube boasts 43 quintillion (4.3252 x 10^19) different states. The pseudocode of their algorithm can be found in the academic paper[PDF warning] as well as the theory behind their proof."