When it comes to its length, the mathematical constant pi is anything but constant. It just keeps going. It can often be impressive and entertaining to see someone list dozens or even hundreds of the digits that make up pi, beginning – as every math nerd knows – with 3.14159, but if you really want to talk impressive, you need to turn to a supercomputer in Switzerland.
On August 5, 2021, researchers at the Competence Center for Data Analysis, Visualization and Simulation unofficially set a new world record by having a computer calculate pi to 62.8 trillion decimal places. While it might seem a little irrational (pun intended) to ostensibly set a new Guinness World Record, the scientists weren't really after such a feat.
"Breaking the record is just a side effect of our work in preparing our high performance computer infrastructure for work in research and development," said Thomas Keller, the lead researcher and a computer scientist at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons in Chur, Switzerland. For the record, the group calculated that extensive piece of pi in about 108 days – roughly one-third of the time it took the previous record-holders to set their mark just last year, with 50 trillion digits.
More pi?
- March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because of how it looks numerically: 3/14. It just so happens that Albert Einstein was born on March 14.
- In geometry, pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
- "Pi" was so-named in 1706 by a mathematician because it is the first Greek letter in the word "perimitros," which means perimeter.
