Comment by Sharlin

1 year ago

The pi in pi*10^9 seconds clearly comes from the fact that Earth’s orbit is circular.

Nore sure if serious or not, but anyway:

1) it isn't circular, although just barely (it's an ellipse) 2) the length of the day is not really related to the length of a year, and the second was defined as 1 / (24 * 60 * 60) = 1 / 86400 of the mean solar day length

So this is really just a coincidence, there is no mathematical or physical reason why this relationship (the year being close to an even power of 10 times pi seconds) would exist.

  • Definitely not serious :)

    But from the fact that an Earth year happens to be roughly pi*10^7 seconds long, it follows that in 10^7 seconds Earth travels about two radians, or one orbital diameter, and equivalently that the diameter of Earth's orbit is roughly 10^7 seconds times Earth's orbital speed.