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The pi has been counted to 3.14 billion digits. If it runs out one day, how serious will the consequences be?

Pi has been counted to 3.14 billion digits

By witty lukasPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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Many parents said that if you want your child to train memory, the method is extremely simple: let your child memorize pi!

I have to say that parents who can think of this trick are really "tiger fathers and wolf mothers", and they are cruel enough to their children. This pi is an inexhaustible irrational number, and it has been counted until 2019. It has reached 3.14 billion units, but it is still unfinished. No matter how good this child is, parents can say: This time is good, next time continue to work hard, you see, it is not finished yet!

Of course, this trick is a bit too damaging, but I don’t know if you have ever thought that within the scope of our knowledge, pi is an infinite irrational number. If it is weak one day, this pi will suddenly become a certain Rational numbers at the end, counting to the end, what will happen? Will it have any major impact?

Pi refers to a ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle, and is generally calculated by 3.14 in life. In daily life, the existence of pi allows us to easily calculate the area of ​​a circle and the volume of a sphere, which brings us a lot of convenience.

According to relevant historical records, as early as around 1700 BC, there was already experimental data about pi in ancient Egypt, which is represented by pi, and the value is about 3.16. Since then, the first person who has made accurate and scientific calculations on pi in the true sense is Archimedes of ancient Greece. In Archimedes' calculation results, the final value of pi is 3.141851, which is relatively close to the current value of pi. It has to be said that human intelligence is indeed amazing.

In our country, in the "Zhou Bi Suan Jing" written in the 1st century BC, the value of pi was taken as 3; in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Liu Hui used the "circle cutting method" to obtain an approximate value of pi 33.1216; Zu Chongzhi's discovery of pi in the Northern and Southern Dynasties was more accurate. At that time, Zu Chongzhi’s precise pi value was accurate to the seventh place after the decimal point, between 3.1315926 and 3.1415927. Compared with Europe, the accuracy of Zu Chongzhi’s research results was nearly 1,000 years earlier than that in Europe. . In the process of Zu Chongzhi's research, like Liu Hui, he used the "circle cutting method", which was continuously cut by a regular polygon to obtain an infinitely close value.

In the historical development process of later generations, people's calculation of pi has become more and more accurate, especially after the invention and development of computer technology, there has been a great breakthrough. However, it is certain that, so far, in the current research results, pi is an infinite number.

So, if this pi counts to the end, what's the impact?

In the eyes of many people, this seems to be something that has no effect on themselves, but it is actually a matter of "affected one's whole body".

The development of modern science and technology is actually based on pi. Whether it is the development of mathematics, the exploration of the universe, the construction of related buildings, etc., it is closely related to pi. The calculus we have come into contact with is based on pi as the theoretical cornerstone. If pi is calculated to the end, then this calculus will also become a science that has been overthrown, and the entire face of advanced mathematics will have to be reconstructed. The influence of academia is enormous; and many buildings we see will be defective, no matter how perfect they are at the time, they will become "defective products" because of this; and what we humans have explored If the pi is no longer an irrational number, then human's cognition of the universe will be greatly changed because of this...

Therefore, if pi is calculated, although it seems that it has no effect on us, in fact, it will have a huge impact on the entire human society. Perhaps, science will become more accurate because of this. However, in a certain period of time, its impact is extremely huge, and the negative impact will obviously be more. For this reason, it is good that the research on pi is error-free. If pi really becomes a finite number one day, then human beings will face a big challenge and a big adjustment.

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About the Creator

witty lukas

The doubts held by human beings are the germs of science

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