Swiss researchers at the University of Applied Sciences Graubünden recently claimed a new world record for calculating the number of digits...
Swiss researchers at the University of Applied Sciences Graubünden recently claimed a new world record for calculating the number of digits of pi – a staggering 62.8 trillion figures. By my estimate, if these digits were printed out they would fill every book in the British Library ten times over. The researchers’ feat of arithmetic took 108 days and 9 hours to complete and dwarfs the previous record of 50 trillion figures set in January 2020.
Why we care
The mathematical constant pi (π) is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter and is approximately 3.1415926536. With only these ten decimal places, we could calculate the circumference of Earth to a precision of less than a millimetre. With 32 decimal places, we could calculate the circumference of our Milky Way galaxy to the precision of the width of a hydrogen atom. And with only 65 decimal places, we would know the size of the observable universe to within a Planck length – the shortest possible measurable distance.
What use, then, are the other 62.79 trillion digits? While the short answer is that they are not scientifically useful at all, mathematicians and computer scientists will be eagerly awaiting the details of this gargantuan computation for a variety of reasons.
