this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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It's been said that with 15 decimals, you can calculate the circumference on the observable universe with a precision of the width of an atom.
It's also been said that with Pi to just four decimal places you can accurately send a spaceship to one of our nearest neighbouring stars and arrive within one kilometre of your intended target.
In fairness, that was said by me, and I do tend to be full of shit.
Not quite, according to JPL https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/
15 decimal places, for Voyager 1 - We have a circle more than 94 billion miles (more than 150 billion kilometers) around, and our calculation of that distance would be off by no more than the width of your little finger.
This is an exaggeration.
The universe's radius is around 46.5 billion light years (around 4.4 * 10^26 meters), the error introduced of using 15 decimals of pi is around the order of 10^-16. Thus the error of calculating the circumference would be in the order of
What's it it's a big ass atom?
It's 39.