After a comprehensive month-long search and some clever distributed computing, Minecraft players have discovered what may well be the world seed for the title menu's panorama background. First added to the game in 2011 and only relatively recently replaced in patch 1.13, the background panorama is a pretty iconic bit of gaming history. However, just what world the panorama was from wasn't known until yesterday, when some digital explorers found the world(s) in question and posted it to Reddit.
A world seed is a specific string of numbers that generates a unique Minecraft world. The origin of the title screen was a mystery because the world generated, then screenshot taken for it, wasn't documented by whoever took it back in the misty days of Minecraft's past. Because worlds can have similar or identical features while still being overall unique, there are actually two candidates for the panorama world.
The project started last month, on the 14th of June, and utilized a distributed computing project called Minecraft@Home, which uses volunteers' idle computer time to "advance Minecraft-related research." The same project is also looking for the tallest cactus in all of Minecraft. They have currently found one that is 22 blocks high. You can read more on Reddit.
