{"id":68,"date":"2008-08-25T20:48:30","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T01:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2008\/08\/25\/biggest-error-ever\/"},"modified":"2008-08-25T20:51:14","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T01:51:14","slug":"biggest-error-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2008\/08\/25\/biggest-error-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggest error ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/23\/opinion\/23collins.html\">This New York Times column <\/a>contains what is no doubt the biggest (in magnitude, if not in importance) numerical error ever to appear in print, and it&#8217;s in a quote by a physicist:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For instance, if all the molecules of air in the room where you&#39;re sitting would suddenly cross to one side, you would not have any air to breathe. This probability is not zero. It is in the 10 to the minus-25 range.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>10<sup>-25<\/sup>?  It&#8217;s more like 10<sup>-1000000000000000000000000000<\/sup> (unless you&#8217;re in a room that contains only about 80 air molecules, in which case you&#8217;re in trouble anyway).  I wonder if a number in a reputable publication has ever been wrong by this large a factor before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This New York Times column contains what is no doubt the biggest (in magnitude, if not in importance) numerical error ever to appear in print, and it&#8217;s in a quote by a physicist: For instance, if all the molecules of air in the room where you&#39;re sitting would suddenly cross to one side, you would &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2008\/08\/25\/biggest-error-ever\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Biggest error ever<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}