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Pi is an irrational phone number , mean it has an innumerous routine of nonrepeating decimal place . But it turn out , NASAscientists require only a small slash of operative — the first 15 decimal property — to solve most of their math job . And even when work out problems on the most head - bending cosmic scales , they never necessitate more than a few dozen extra digits .
You may remember pi from school day . It ’s the ratio between a circle ’s diameter ( the distance between polar points ) and perimeter ( the distance around the border ) . Simply put , pi is equal to the circumference of a Mexican valium separate by its diameter , which means you’re able to figure out the circuit of any lap if you know its diam or radius ( half the diam ) and pi , which is most usually abbreviated as 3.14 — which is why Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 .
NASA scientists need only the first 15 decimal places of pi to work out most of their calculations.
Wecurrently make out more than 105 trillion digit of pi , thanks to a computer companionship that crunched the number for 75 days . But after that , pi ’s denary places are a complete mystery to us .
However , you need to memorize only the first few decimals of pi for most real - world applications . And even if you ’re a NASA scientist , you could get aside with knowing just 15 , especially if you ’re only study oursolar arrangement . ( With 15 denary places , pi looks like this : 3.141592653589793 . )
The reason scientists do n’t need to bother admit any more fingerbreadth in their calculation is that the act they are using , even at terrestrial or starring graduated table , are too small for additional denary places to have any real event on the output value , concord toNASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory .
The circumference of Earth barely changes after 16 digits of pi.
Related : The universe would not make sense without math
Take our planet : Earth has a diameter of around 7,900 nautical mile ( 12,700 km ) , which means its perimeter is around 24,900 miles ( 40,100 km ) . If you were to reckon this exact perimeter with the first 16 digits of pi ( the number three followed by 15 denary place ) and a more accurate version of operative with hundreds of decimal places , the difference between the two result would be around 300 times less than the width of a human haircloth , according to NASA .
The fault gets greater the larger the act you use . But for most practical computing NASA scientist involve to make , the deviation is still negligible .
The Voyager 1 probe is around 15 billion miles from Earth.
For model , theVoyager 1 investigation , which is now in interstellar space , is presently more than 15 billion mi ( 24 billion klick ) from Earth . If you require to cypher the circuit of a lap with this length as the spoke , the difference between using the first 16 digit of pi compared with hundreds of fingerbreadth would be less than the breadth of a little finger , agree to NASA .
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However , some calculations still ask more decimal places .
For example , if you wanted to calculate the circumference of a circle that encapsulated the known world , the radius of that roach would be around 46 billion light - year — the distance light has move since theBig Bangwhen factoring in the expansion of the universe of discourse . In this case , you would want 38 decimals of operative to get a value with the same level of truth with which we can presently evaluate the width of an atom , according to NASA .
Edit : This clause was updated on March 15 after a new world record for the known digits of shamus was achieved .
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