The value of the number pi has been calculated to a new world record length of 31 trillion digits, surpassing the previous record of 22 trillion.
Emma Haruka Iwao is a Google employee from Japan who found new digits of Pi with the help of the company’s cloud computing service. Pi is the number you get when you divide a circle’s circumference by its diameter, and the first digits, 3.14, are well known but the number is infinitely long. Extending the known sequence of digits in pi is very difficult because the number follows no set pattern. Pi is very useful and is used in engineering, physics, super-computing and space exploration because its value can be used in calculations for waves, circles and cylinders.
Emma used some of Googles technology to complete the task. The calculation required 170TB of data and took 25 virtual machines 121 days to complete.
When asked about the amazing achievement she said:
“I feel very surprised, I am still trying to adjust to the reality. The world record has been really hard. There is no end with pi, I would love to try with more digits.” she said.
Just to put in perspective how large this number is, it would take 332,064 years to say the 31.4 trillion digit number. Crazy right?
