# Precision error in Nbody simulation

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/precision-error-in-nbody-simulation/79061>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [April 5, 2022, 4:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/precision-error-in-nbody-simulation/79061 "2022-04-05T16:30:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2022, 4:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/precision-error-in-nbody-simulation/79061/2 "2022-04-05T16:32:40Z")

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> [@staufenbach](#):
>
> However,for reason i dont fully understand there a discrepancy between the two result (at machine precision level) which end up accumulating and diverging.

> [@PSA: floating-point arithmetic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-floating-point-arithmetic/8678):
>
> Sometimes people are surprised by the results of floating-point calculations such as julia\> 5/6 0.8333333333333334 # shouldn't the last digit be 3? julia\> 2.6 - 0.7 - 1.9 2.220446049250313e-16 # shouldn't the answer be 0? These are not bugs in Julia. They’re consequences of the IEEE-standard 64-bit binary representation of floating-point numbers that is burned into computer hardware, which Julia and many other languages use by default. Brief explanation You can t…

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