Pi

I had dinner with David and his family this weekend and his youngest son mentioned that "Pi day" was just celebrated at his school this past week (3/14) over dinner. In the midst of our conversation about Quantum computing and quantum communications, his 12 year old son exclaims "If I calculate Pi, will I unlock the secrets to the universe ?" That certainly caught me off guard but I thought about it for a moment and I didn't have an answer except that perhaps quantum computation might help him just find the answer some day.

Pi is a constant calcuated by the ratio of the circumference of any circle to it's diameter. Most of us have learned that the area of a circle was Pi multiplied by the radius of the circle squared (A= π*r²⁾. I just had a grade school flashback. I remember using the approximation 3.14159 for most of my calculations and this special number has some properties that make it unique. For starters, Pi is always the same number for any size circle and the perhaps the most interesting property is that it is an infinite decimal meaning that the decimal portion of Pi can be calculated forever without repition. This is very different than say a decimal like 1.33333 which repeats infinately but with predictable patterns of numbers. Pi for example never repeats patterns and has been calculated to 50 million decimal places so far. The decimal appears to be infinite and beyond modern computation methods. It is considered an irrational number and was approximated by the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and the Greeks.

Perhaps a quantum computer can calcuate Pi some day or at least reveal if it is in fact an infinite decimal. The answer to that question just might reveal something about the universe after all.

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944
592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647...