Almost-tiling the plane by ellipses (Q1807610)

Packings with centrally symmetric convex bodies are considered. The \(\lambda\)-enlargement of a packing is obtained by enlarging all bodies in the packing by the factor \(\lambda\) from their centers. For a given class of bodies, one is now interested in the smallest \(\lambda\) such that there exists a packing whose \(\lambda\)-enlargement covers the space. For bodies with bounded diameter, the following two results are obtained. It is proved that for every \(\lambda > 1\), there is a periodic packing of the plane with ellipses whose \(\lambda\)-enlargement covers the plane. On the other hand, for any bounded-diameter packing of the plane with circular discs, the \((1+10^{-5})\)-enlargement is not a covering. The first result can be generalized to the broader class of bounded-diameter affine images of plane centrally symmetric convex domains.