arXiv:2610.37711v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Place closed Euclidean balls of radius r at the points of (1/2, 1/2, ..., 1/2) + Z^n. The view-obstruction problem for spheres asks for the least r such that every ray from the origin into the open positive orthant meets a ball. Equivalently, it asks for D_n = sup_v min_{t in R} sum_i ||t v_i - 1/2||{Z}^2 over positive integer vectors v, where ||x||{Z} denotes the distance from x to the nearest integer. The values for n <= 5 are classical. We prove D_6 = 107/312, attained only by permutations of (12, 9, 7, 5, 3, 2), and D_7 = 73/180, attained only by permutations of (11, 10, 8, 7, 4, 3, 1). The proof reduces the supremum to a finite search. The key facts are an exact lower bound d_n(v) >= delta^2_U for every rational subspace U perpendicular to v, a matching fiber upper bound, and Banaszczyk's transference theorem, applied along the Korkine-Zolotarev flag of the dual lattice v^perpendicular intersection Z^n. The search is quotiented by signed coordinate permutations and carried out entirely in exact rational arithmetic. It terminates with a certificate: no node of the search is left unresolved, and every surviving candidate is evaluated exactly. The method also recovers the known values for n = 3, 4, 5.
Continue to arXiv Mathematics →You are being forwarded in 6s — stay on this page