An algorithm for generating the sphere coordinates in a three-dimensional osculatory packing

Abstract

This paper develops an efficient algorithm which generates the pentaspherical coordinates of the spheres in an osculatory packing of the three-dimensional unit sphere. The algorithm has a tree-like structure and is easily modified so that, given a prescribed bound, it counts the number of spheres in the packing whose curvatures are less than this bound. The algorithm has been used to produce heuristic estimates of the exponent M of the packing, and these indicate that M is approximately 2.42.