Solid angle orientation formula_9, and distance from the viewer as: where the surface area of a sphere is . The solid angle of a cone with its apex at the apex of the solid angle, and with apex angle 2, is the area of a spherical cap on a unit sphere For small such that , this reduces to the area of a circle . The above is found by computing the following double integral using the unit surface element in spherical coordinates: This formula can also be derived without the use of calculus. Over 2200 years ago Archimedes proved that the
Filling area conjecture onto , without increasing its volume. This implies that the replacement has not less volume than the original manifold . Filling area conjecture In differential geometry, Mikhail Gromov's filling area conjecture asserts that the hemisphere has minimum area among the surfaces that fill a closed curve of given length without introducing shortcuts between its points. Every smooth surface or curve in Euclidean space is a metric space, in which the (intrinsic) distance between two points of is defined as the infimum of the lengths of the curves that go from to "along" . For example, on a closed curve formula_1