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Why would one assume that in the first place. The formula is meant for a perfect sphere. A perfect sphere has the lowest surface area possible for a spheroid. Any imperfection adds surface area.

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 19 points 5 hours ago

There was a fallacious explanation for this floating around a long time ago basically starting with a triangle and adding sides to the polygon 1 at a time, making the claim that it gets closer to being a circle each time but never actually becomes a perfect circle. It then made the claim that a perfect circle, therefore, is a polygon with infinite sides and as a result has infinite surface area. If someone is just... really gullible, gave it zero actual thought, and hasn't taken middle school level math, it could have been convincing.

[-] swicano@programming.dev 18 points 5 hours ago

Ohhh, it's like they got the first half of a riemann sum type explanation for curve integration, and started daydreaming halfway through

[-] Eq0@literature.cafe 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Or o fFinite Element triangulation

It hurts me to know that this is a real thing and plenty of people ate it up.

[-] danekrae@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

But is a perfectly straight section of coastline infinite?

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 6 hours ago

The opposite even. The more imperfect the sphere the more surface area it has.

[-] garth@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 hours ago

Coastline paradox, now in 3D!

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 hours ago

Thats what i had in mind yep :3

[-] Eq0@literature.cafe 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Really depends on the imperfections

You can hand-craft imperfections to make the surface infinite, but you can also keep it constant or add very little

[-] dog@reddthat.com 5 points 5 hours ago

Slopini says it so I need to double check

this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2026
133 points (95.9% liked)

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