How to safely reopen offices, schools and other public spaces while keeping people six feet apart comes down to a question mathematicians have been studying for centuries. Sphere packing might seem ...

Every grocer knows the best way to stack oranges into a bag in order to maximize the available space. But the mathematical explanation for this optimal packing of spheres into a confined space is ...

Theoretical physicist Moumita Maiti and colleagues at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India, have now implemented an algorithm for analysing void space in ...