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Let's say we have a horizontal roof and the sun is going to go from 0 to some number of degrees on the horizon. We wish to arrange solid objects above the roof to completely block out the sun across its whole range while allowing as much view of the rest of the sky as possible. Is there some limit to how well that can be done, and what's the best arrangement with the least amount of the solid objects being dust-sized?

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    $\begingroup$ This is a generalization of the "opaque set" problem in geometry. This typically considers a compact, often 2-dimensional metric space Q like the square [0, 1]^2 and asks: What is the least-possible 1-dimensional measure that blocks all shortest geodesics between two points of Q? (Here "blocks" means intersects.) Very few results have been proven, though there are many promising guesses. $\endgroup$
    – Daniel Asimov
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 21:42

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