Almost-tiling the plane by ellipses

Abstract

For any delta > 1 we construct a periodic and locally finite packing of the plane with ellipses whose delta-enlargement covers the whole plane. This answers a question of Imre Bárány. On the other hand, we show that if C is a packing in the plane with circular discs of radius at most 1, then its 1.00001-enlargement covers no square with side length 4.