Research problems (Q5966488)

The author restates the following long-standing conjecture: In \(E^ 3\) any 12-neighbour packing of congruent balls consists of hexagonal layers. To be more understandable: Each ball of the mentioned arrangement shall be touched by at least 12 others, and a hexagonal layer of balls is a configuration of equal balls whose centers lie in a plane and each ball is touched by 6 others. The remaining gap in the whole proof and the connection to a paper of \textit{I. Barany}, \textit{Z. Füredi} and \textit{J. Pach} [Can. J. Math. 36, 569-576 (1984; Zbl 0507.52001)] on a 2-dimensional version are outlined.