What would you do with a bit of spare time and 600 Rubik's cubes?

Probably not this: a team of 10 students have put together an incredibly elaborate and beautiful mosaic of Neil deGrasse Tyson's face using only Rubik's cubes.

cUeLPSI(Reddit/Thetrufflehunter)

The intricate artwork, which used 625 cubes in total, went viral shortly after it was posted to Reddit by Thetrufflehunter this week.

"I posted it on Reddit for fun, and by the next day it had over 40,000 upvotes," the student told the Press Association.

"It sort of blew my mind that something like this could blow up. Dr Tyson himself even commented."

It's true - the famous astrophysicist and science communicator was so flattered, he thanked the students himself.

Tyson has used the same account to answer a Reddit Ask Me Anything in the past.

Screen Shot 2018 05 18 at 11.23.53 am(Reddit/Thetrufflehunter)

But because it's Reddit, there were definitely some haters. Nevertheless, Thetrufflehunter took it all in his stride.

In one of his comments on the post, he added, unfazed, "Edit: yes yes, you're all very clever with your jokes. Yes, we're nerds, virgins, and we get all the p*ssy. Are you happy now?"

Thetrufflehunter, who has remained unnamed, is the brains behind the artwork, with five years of experience in solving Rubik's cube puzzles.

He's also a bit of an expert when it comes to creating mosaics out of them. In fact, he said he's done two more all on his own, which took about 8 hours each. One of them was even of his chemistry teacher.

With a team of students behind him, however, the NDT mosaic took only an hour. The budding artist/scientist said he created the new project as part of a "sort of quarterly elective" at his school.

"In the elective I taught 10 students with no prior knowledge how to solve Rubik's cubes," he said

"Once they were confident, we found a template online for the mosaic of Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson and got right to work."

"With 10 people it actually went pretty fast, and we finished the full mosaic in about an hour and a half," he added.

Someone get this kid a job at NASA.

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