Ramanujan’s 100-year-old pi formula reveals a hidden Universe in modern physics

Ramanujan’s Old Pi Formulae Find New Life In Modern Physics (Image: Canva)

A quiet idea from 1914 still shapes new science. A young Srinivasa Ramanujan once shared bold pi equations. Today those same lines guide hard work in physics. A fresh study now links his ideas to current theories. His influence travels across time and across disciplines.

Why did Ramanujan’s formulae stay relevant for a century? His set of 17 expressions offered huge speed. They gave long digit chains with fewer steps taken. The global maths community still trusts these equations. They now help reach trillions of accurate pi digits. Scientists recently reached 200 trillion digits using such work. The Chudnovsky algorithm uses Ramanujan’s ideas as a basis. IISc noted this link in an official statement.

How did IISc researchers study the origin question? Professor Aninda Sinha guided Faizan Bhat and colleagues. They wanted to find the source of the form. They looked for a place where maths meets physics. They asked if some natural system uses this structure. They hoped Ramanujan’s mathematics would appear without prompting.

Which physics theory revealed such a strong link? Their search pointed to conformal field theory directly. The theory models systems that keep shape across scales. A clear example is water near its critical point. Liquid and vapour look the same under that state.

Why focus on a narrower family of such theories? They studied logarithmic conformal field theories in detail. These models answer tough physical questions on flow. They apply to percolation inside materials and early turbulence. They also appear in certain black hole descriptions. All these cases used structures seen in Ramanujan’s lines.

What did this reveal for modern physics tasks? Sinha and Bhat used these links to compute faster. They found new shortcuts for complex quantities in physics. Their speed mirrored Ramanujan’s fast method for pi digits. Bhat said nice mathematics often mirrors real systems. Ramanujan aimed at pure maths but reached far more. His ideas touched black holes, turbulence and percolation. He worked on these unknowingly through his formulae.

What does this mean for science across fields? The study showed his work helps more than calculation. It now supports research on turbulent flow and black holes. It makes dense equations easier for many physicists. It brings sharp efficiency to high-energy physics tasks.

How do scientists view his place in modern theory? Sinha said they admired his deep vision strongly. Ramanujan worked in early 20th-century India alone. He had almost no access to modern physical ideas. Yet his lines predicted structures central to physics today. His legacy keeps shaping how scientists study the universe.