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Pi Calculated To Record 2.5 Trillion Digits
Joshua writes "Researchers from Japan have calculated Pi to over 2.5 trillion decimals using the T2K Open Supercomputer (which is currently ranked 47th in the world according to a June, 2009 report from Top500.org). This new number more than doubles the previous record of about 1.2 trillion decimals set in 2002 by another Japanese research team. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no pattern."
Otherwise how would you calculate it? The "pattern" is it matches the stream of digits produced by a simple algorithm!
The point is that someday, a computer instructed to compute pi indefinitely will simply respond, "Why don't you just go fuck yourself?" Then we'll know that the machine has achieved sentience.
Researchers will find that Pi begins to repeat after 2,500,000,000,001 digits.
A nice little article on why it's useless to know pi to more than 50 digits in this universe.
http://everything2.com/title/Too%2520small%2520a%2520Universe%2520to%2520memorize%2520Pi
The point is that someday, a computer instructed to compute pi indefinitely will simply respond, "Why don't you just go fuck yourself?" Then we'll know that the machine has achieved sentience.
I'd be even more impressed if it said "Sure thing, I'll get right on it!" and then pretended to work while surfing the web.
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Of course there's a pattern. I mean, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to match it with 3.[0-9]{1,}
I fail to see how not understanding the word "seems" is insightful.
I've constructed a perfect circle, with a circumference of 1 meter. It's the diameter I'm having trouble with.
Of course there's a pattern, even a simple and elegant one. It's equal to:
4 * (1 -1/3 + 1/5 -1/7 +1/9 -1/11 +1/13 -1/15 etc., etc., etc.)
Just because the pattern doesn't come out pretty in a decimal representation doesn't mean it's not elegant or not a pattern.
To travel from one point to another, an object must pass through all the points in between. There are an infinite number of points "in between," thus to move at all, an object must travel through an infinite number of points in a finite time. Clearly this definition of reality is flawed: stop using it.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
I heard somewhere it's equal to the circumference of a circle divided by it's diameter...
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
We know without a doubt that it never repeats - if it did it would be a rational number, it has been proven to be an irrational number, moreso it is transcendental. We also know the exact pattern, take the taylor series of sin about pi/4, you get an elegant and simple series solution for pi.
That is not the point. The point is and exercise in computing, everything we do in computing involves rational numbers only (floats) and there is substantial error involved with this. It is computationally difficult to deal with large numbers, hence any method to do this more effectively is a gain for science.
Knowing (thinking) that something doesn't repeat and PROVING that it doesn't repeat are two ENTIRELY different things. I am guessing your maths/science education either stopped very early or you didn't do too well in either.
I think it's funny that you are insulting someone's math education immediately after you imply that no proof exists showing pi not to repeat.
I always found the Basel problem to be the most elegant converging series involving pi (being the square root of six times the sum of the reciprocals of the squares), probably because there are so many (elegant) proofs of this (pdf), because it's so simple to understand yet not so simple to prove on a cursory inspection, and because it's the specific case that generalized to one of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics.
I'd be even more impressed if it said "Sure thing, I'll get right on it!" and then pretended to work while surfing the web.
Hey! That's my job.
They make a machine to take every job. Before I know it they'll have a machine loafing at the corner bar, smoking cigarettes and downing Jim Beam and Coke like it was water.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Not necessarily. We can't really know about anything smaller than the Planck length, so in practical terms your paradox probably fails. The universe may be discrete on those scales.
Pi was shown to be irrational in 1768 and transcendental in 1882, finally putting to rest the ancient problem of "squaring the circle".
I believe you are confusing rational numbers and real numbers. rational numbers are those that can be expressed as p/q where p and q are prime integers. The existence of real numbers that are not rational follows from cantor's diagonal argument : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_diagonal_argument
Proofs of the irrationality of pi can be found on wikipedia : proof
The sqr root of a negative is not defined in the real set but only in the complex set. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_numbers
They make a machine to take every job. Before I know it they'll have a machine loafing at the corner bar, smoking cigarettes and downing Jim Beam and Coke like it was water.
I see you've met Bender.
I hear those black hole's are pretty loose
Racist!