The Lebesgue universal covering problem

DOI10.20382/JOCG.V6I1A12MaRDI QIDQ2970426zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors John Baez, Karine Bagdasaryan, Philip E. Gibbs

Publication date 30 March 2017

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.01251

zbMATH Keywords

best universal covering

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Convex sets in (2) dimensions (including convex curves) (52A10) Packing and covering in (2) dimensions (aspects of discrete geometry) (52C15)

Abstract: In 1914 Lebesgue defined a "universal covering" to be a convex subset of the plane that contains an isometric copy of any subset of diameter 1. His challenge of finding a universal covering with the least possible area has been addressed by various mathematicians: Pal, Sprague and Hansen have each created a smaller universal covering by removing regions from those known before. However, Hansen's last reduction was microsopic: he claimed to remove an area of $6cdot10^{-18}$, but we show that he actually removed an area of just $8cdot10^{-21}$. In the following, with the help of Greg Egan, we find a new, smaller universal covering with area less than $0.8441153$. This reduces the area of the previous best universal covering by a whopping $2.2cdot10^{-5}$.

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Cited in

(8)

• A minimal Lebesgue covering exists
• Minimal regular polygons serving as universal covers in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 2\)
• Small universal covers for sets of unit diameter
• Generalized breadths, circular Cantor sets, and the least area UCC
• On universal covers in normed planes
• A LOWER BOUND FOR LEBESGUE'S UNIVERSAL COVER PROBLEM
• Universal convex covering problems under translations and discrete rotations
• Smallest universal covers for families of triangles

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