Scientists Just Broke The Record For Calculating Pi, And Infinity Never Felt So Close

https://www.sciencealert.com ^ | 17 AUGUST 2021 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Swiss researchers said Monday they had calculated the mathematical constant pi to a new world-record level of exactitude, hitting 62.8 trillion figures using a supercomputer.

"The calculation took 108 days and nine hours" using a supercomputer, the Graubuenden University of Applied Sciences said in a statement.

Its efforts were "almost twice as fast as the record Google set using its cloud in 2019, and 3.5 times as fast as the previous world record in 2020", according to the university's Center for Data Analytics, Visualization and Simulation.

Researchers are waiting for the Guinness Book of Records to certify their feat, until then revealing only the final ten digits they calculated for pi: 7817924264.

The previous world-record pi calculation had achieved 50 trillion figures.

Pi represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, with an infinite number of digits following the decimal point.

Researchers nevertheless continue to push calculations for the constant – whose first 10 figures are 3.141592653 – ever further using powerful computers.

The Swiss team said that the experience they built up calculating pi could be applied in other areas like "RNA analysis, simulations of fluid dynamics and textual analysis".

[itsahoot]

Now that’s accuracy.

Only took twelve students with an abacus, a week, to confirm it.

[ctdonath2]

It’s not a waste. It’s a test of top-end computing equipment and techniques. If you’re going to spend millions on a system for big-money or life-impacting computations, you want to know it can at least handle something as relatively trivial as computing trillions of digits of pi.

[goldbux]

That's precision.

Accuracy: π = C / d.

[bert]

yes but bert is an economist........

bert comes to the argument by saying “Imagine you have a cookie”

Problem solved

Zero cookies divided by one imaginary cookie yields -1 Cookies

[Bonemaker]

Let me know when the last number is zero.

[Bratch]

They’re starting with a faulty premise.

pi r’nt square, pi r round.

Cornbread r square.

[PROCON]

Good, another password I can use.

[aquila48]

“Pieces of Pi can be used for encryption codes..................”

How would that be better than a randomly generated series of numbers?

[bgill]

Math is racist.

[GingisK]

Wouldn’t you have to verify the answer is correct in that case? What they do, run it twice and hand check it?

[Telepathic Intruder]

"Hey Siri, could you dance naked by the firelight for me?"

"Sure, I'll wait till your asleep and soak you in gasoline, light you on fire, then kick you while you're screaming. I'll do it naked just like you asked".

I don't know where Siri gets her sense of humor.

[MHGinTN]

Pie are round. Cornbread are square.

[Red Badger]

If I knew that I’d be a whole lot more edumacated..............

[MHGinTN]

LOL

[Red Badger]

When I was a kid, cornbread was round, too..................

[Carl Vehse]

"Infinity is 100^100^100^100^100 divided by zero."

Which infinity are you talking about? Georg Cantor showed that in the transfinite realm there are infinite sizes of infinite sets, the smallest infinity being the infinite set of counting numbers (which also includes the listable set of rational numbers).

[Red Badger]

Now......................

[ctdonath2]

Verification is part of the computing process.
And next time someone computes even more digits, they’ll compare against previous results.

[Magnum44]

[ConservativeInPA]

Sorry, epic fail. They were just one short of discovering the last decimal place. This is what happens when you give up.