this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
848 points (94.1% liked)
Technology
59609 readers
2978 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Please tell me you actually had that many digits of significant figures and weren't just copying down overly-specific figures from your calculator...
He most certainly didn't. Other than physical constants, very few measurements were ever taken to more than 15 significant figures. It's just not practical as no instrument will get 1m precision over a light year. A spacecraft travelling anywhere near that far will just get an order of magnitude closer and then recalculate with one more digit of precision.
You are exactly right, and I wasn't copy pasting I was writing it all down as part of pen-and-paper submitted answers. I don't have 1/5 of the energy for such trivial things anymore.
Prof here...it's always the latter.