Shortest closed curve to inspect a sphere (Q2054214)

\textit{V. A. Zalgaller} [Algebra Anal. 8, No. 3, 1--13 (1996; Zbl 0877.52005)] considered a variety of similar problems, one of them asking the following: Given the unit ball \(B\) in \(\mathbb{R}^3\), find a closed curve \(\gamma \subset \mathbb{R}^3 \setminus B\) of minimum length such that every boundary point of \(B\) is visible from a suitable point of the curve. He also conjectured that \(\gamma\) should be of length \(4\pi\) and consist of four halfcircles of unit radius. The authors of the present paper affirmatively solve this attractive problem. They use a nontrivial mixture of topological methods, integral geometric techniques, and geometric measure theory. Some of their results can be verified with a software package.