A simple deck of cards

[A.W.E.S.O.M.-O 1973]

I remembered reading this once on Poker Pages, about the enormous amount of ways a simple deck of cards can be arranged, and found it quite surprising, and later, unbelievable. http://www.pokerpages.com/articles/archives/hench33.htm At the time, I was younger and maybe mis-using some substance that made me too lazy to verify the guy's facts. Well, tonight it came back to mind and I found it again, and it was entertaining and believable. That is, until he added the addendum that claimed the number of ways to arrange a deck of cards is equal to the number of atoms in the Milky Way. That's just TOO fantastical to be true, right? Off I went tonight with an internet, plus time to burn... these were the figures that kept repeating on me: Number of ways to arrange a 52-card deck: 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 (This one is consistently the same, and established.) Number of atoms in the Milky Way (estimate, of course): 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 --- Pretty close! It's about 80.7% when compared to the number of atoms. I guess he DID say in an average galaxy 'like' the Milky Way. But anyhow, THE NUMBER OF WAYS TO ARRANGE A DECK OF CARDS IS 80% OF THE NUMBER OF ATOMS IN THE MILKY WAY. Just when you thought you'd "seen it all", huh?