HonoraryMancunianThe biggest hand calculation in a century! [π Day 2024]
I often wonder, when is the last time that pi was actually measured, and what was the precision level?
I suppose that any rounding on the measure will have a significant impact. How do scientist alway end up with the same value to thousand of digits?
The rounding has a less significant impact than you’d think.
Interplanetary calculations of the highest precision will use just 15 decimals, which results in an error of about 1cm when calculating a circumference of 150 billion km.
But if you really want to measure even more accurately than that… The circumference of a circle with a diameter of 92 billion light years (as large as the known universe) can be calculated using 37 decimals of pi, and the result would be accurate within the width of a single hydrogen atom.