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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, Geodetic interferometers already exist and can measure very small deviations. Give them arms the length of the observable universe and they will increase in accuracy, not decrease in accuracy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  If you constructed a circle with the radius of the universe, then measured its circumference and radius measurement accuracy would easily be able to tell the difference between a real circle and a mathematical circle. That is because neither the circumference of the circle will nor the diameter of the circle will be moving through empty space. They will be near enough to matter to measure detectable deflections.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  From your measurement of pi, we can deduce that you live in an anti-de Sitter space, so all the string theorists will now be sending you emails to test out their theories.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Overly snarky response: Uhhhm. Have you been asleep since, what, 1915 or something? We have extraordinary evidence, and everyone has accepted it, in so far as I know.

  Less snarky response: the path on which light moves is the universes instantiation of a straight line. It is “the (locally) shortest path between two points”, the same definition you learned in geometry class. Yet in our universe, two straight lines can intersect each other twice. This is because our universe has at least some local curvature, meaning it is non locally non Euclidean. In order to have a mathematically perfect circle you would need to live in a universe without any matter or energy, and with certain other properties.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The universe is non-Euclidean, so no circle made in the actual geometry of the universe actually has the ratio of pi between its circumference and diameter.

  Is that the part you are confused about, or did I write something else badly?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  One thing to be aware of is the if you actually made a circle and measured its radius and circumference you wouldn’t get pi. Not because your measurements would be off, but because the universe does not follow the assumptions mathematicians used to define pi—namely Euclidean geometry. Pi is mathematical, not physical. If a the real circles and real diameters don’t give you pi that is a problem for the universe, not a problem for mathematics.