By Peter Weiss
As is clear to anyone who has played with blocks, piles of cubes can occupy every last niche of a space. As for other objects that can’t be arranged to fill a space completely, such as cylinders and spheres, scientists have long pondered what their densest packings might be.
Now, computer simulations indicate an unexpected result: Certain arrangements of modestly deformed spheres, called ellipsoids, exceed the maximum packing density of spheres.