2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/19958I describe the classic circle-packing problem on a sphere, and the analytic and numerical approaches that have been used to study it. I then present a very simple Markov-chain Monte Carlo algorithm, which succeeds in finding the best solutions known today. The behavior of the algorithm is put into the context of the statistical physics of glasses.6 pages, 5 figures, Talk given at the conference `Inhomogeneous Random Systems' University of Cergy-Pontoise, France, (23 January 2001)Disordered Systems and Neural Networkstext