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Join three independent uniform points on a sphere when their central angle is acute. Given angle $\gamma$ between the first pair, the third point's two favorable hemispheres overlap in a spherical lune of area fraction $(\pi -\gamma )/(2\pi )$. If $\gamma <\pi /2$, connection requires membership in their union, of probability $1/2+\gamma /(2\pi )$. If $\gamma >\pi /2$, it requires membership in their intersection, of probability $1/2-\gamma /(2\pi )$. Integrating these against the central-angle density $\sin \gamma /2$ proves the displayed probability. Connectivity is weaker than all three pairwise angles being acute.

For three independent uniform points on a sphere, condition on the central angle $\theta$ between the first two. The third point makes acute angles with both exactly when it lies in the intersection of their positive hemispheres. That intersection is a spherical lune of opening $\pi -\theta$, hence has probability $(\pi -\theta )/(2\pi )$. The first two points also need $\theta <\pi /2$. Integrating against the central angle between independent uniform sphere points density gives $(4\pi {)}^{-1}{\int }_0^{\pi /2}(\pi -\theta )\sin \theta d\theta =(\pi -1)/(4\pi )$.

For a spherical triangle on a sphere of radius $R$, bounded by shorter great circle arcs and with interior angles $\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma$, the spherical excess formula, the triangular form of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, isHere is an area proof. On the unit sphere, a spherical lune of angle $\alpha$ has area $2\alpha$: rotating around its vertices shows it occupies a fraction $\alpha /(2\pi )$ of the sphere when one uses the full angular width, or directly integrates ${\int }_0^{\alpha }{\int }_0^{\pi }\sin \theta d\theta d\phi$. The three side great circles of the triangle divide the sphere into eight regions, including the triangle $T$ and its antipodal triangle $-T$. Choose, at each vertex, the lune containing $T$, and also its antipodal lune. Each of $T$ and $-T$ is covered three times by these six lunes; each other region is covered once. Thus, with $A$ the area of $T$,This proves $A=\alpha +\beta +\gamma -\pi$; scaling lengths by $R$ scales area by $R^2$.

Radially project each face of the regular dodecahedron from its centre onto the unit sphere. Each edge and the origin lie in a plane, so its image is a shorter great circle arc. The twelve faces give congruent convex regular spherical polygons partitioning the sphere. At each projected vertex three congruent face angles fill the tangent plane. Hence each spherical pentagon has angle $2\pi /3$ at each of its five vertices. Splitting a pentagon into three spherical triangles and summing the spherical excess formula givesThis also agrees with $4\pi /12$, as required by the spherical partition.

By rotational invariance, fix the first landing point at the north pole of a sphere of radius $R$. A band of central angle $\theta$ and width $d\theta$ has area $2\pi R^2\sin \theta d\theta$. Dividing by total area gives the central angle between independent uniform sphere points densityand zero outside this range. The radius cancels.

Given the first pair's central angle $\gamma$, the third point can communicate with each of them exactly when it lies in that point's positive hemisphere. Choose their intersection line as a polar axis. Each hemisphere permits an azimuth interval of length $\pi$, and the intervals' centres are separated by $\gamma$. Their overlap is a spherical lune of opening $\pi -\gamma$, with area $2R^2(\pi -\gamma )$. ThereforeThe union probability follows from inclusion-exclusion for two hemispheres:Thus the requested conditional answers are“Either” here is inclusive: a third ship linked to both is also linked to at least one.

For network connectivity, if $\gamma <\pi /2$ the first pair is already linked, and the third must link to at least one of them. If $\gamma >\pi /2$, the first pair is not linked, and both must link through the third. Consequently the connectivity of three acute-angle sphere points isUsing ${\int }_0^{\pi /2}\gamma \sin \gamma d\gamma =1$ and ${\int }_{\pi /2}^{\pi }\gamma \sin \gamma d\gamma =\pi -1$ givesAngles exactly equal to the threshold have probability zero. Connectivity allows relaying and is weaker than requiring direct links between every pair.

Work first on the unit sphere. A spherical lune of angle $\alpha$ has area $2\alpha$: its fraction of sphere area is $\alpha /(2\pi )$. The three great circles extending the sides of a nondegenerate spherical triangle divide the sphere into four antipodal pairs of triangular regions. Call the desired region $T$, of area $A$, and its three adjacent regions $T_1,T_2,T_3$, of areas $A_1,A_2,A_3$. These four regions contain one region from each antipodal pair, so $A+A_1+A_2+A_3=2\pi$. The lune at each vertex consists of $T$ and one of these adjacent regions. Therefore, if the three interior angles are $\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma$,which proves the spherical excess formula, the spherical-triangle form of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem:For a sphere of radius $s$, multiply this area by $s^2$.

Triangulate a convex spherical $n$-gon by diagonals from a vertex. There are $n-2$ spherical triangles, and their angles add to the polygon's interior angle sum. Thus its unit-sphere area isFor a nondegenerate convex regular polygon in an open hemisphere, area is positive and each angle is less than $\pi$, giving $(n-2)\pi /n<\alpha <\pi$. Every angle in this interval occurs. Indeed place $n$ vertices at equal longitude spacings and colatitude $t\in (0,\pi /2)$ about a pole, and join consecutive vertices by shorter great circle arcs. The polygon is convex and regular. Split a central isosceles spherical triangle along the perpendicular to its edge. The resulting right spherical triangle has angles $\pi /n$, $\alpha /2$, $\pi /2$, and hypotenuse $t$. The angular spherical law of cosines yieldsso $\cot (\alpha /2)=\cos t\tan (\pi /n)$. As $t$ increases from $0$ to $\pi /2$, $\alpha$ increases continuously through exactlyThe endpoints are degenerate limits, not strict convex polygons.

For the spherical triangle reflection group, positive area requires $1/p+1/q+1/r>1$. Each angle is less than $\pi$, so the integer denominators are at least two. Arrange $p\le q\le r$. If $p\ge 3$ the sum is at most one, hence $p=2$. If $q\ge 4$ the sum is again at most one; thus either $q=2$ and any $r\ge 2$ works, or $q=3$ and $r=3,4,5$. These triangles exist, for example as the reflection chambers of a regular dihedral configuration, tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron, respectively.

To count group elements using the assumed tessellation, first label the original triangle's three vertices by their types and propagate these labels through side reflections. Around a type-$p$ vertex there are $2p$ sectors; the associated alternating reflections make a full turn and return the labels unchanged. The same holds at the other types. Every closed path in the dual tessellation is generated by these circuits around vertices, since the sphere is simply connected. Thus the labels are globally consistent, including when two angle denominators coincide. Every generated isometry preserves these labels. An element stabilizing a triangle therefore fixes its three vertices and is the identity. Consequently group elements correspond bijectively to triangles, and area givesThe possibilities, including permutations of the entries, are

Here is an explicit dodecahedron construction for the last case, avoiding an assumption about which vertices of the tessellation to join. Put $\phi =(1+\sqrt{5})/2$, and take the convex hull of the twenty pointswith independent signs. They all have squared radius three. The supporting plane $\phi y+z={\phi }^2$ contains the five verticesin cyclic order. Consecutive distances are $2/\phi$, and nonconsecutive distances are $2$, so this is a regular pentagon. Changing the two signs in its normal $(0,\phi ,1)$ and cyclically permuting coordinates gives twelve supporting planes, all with a congruent pentagon. Each listed vertex lies on three of these faces; the sixty face-edge incidences pair into thirty edges. The faces form a closed convex polyhedral surface with $20-30+12=2$, hence exhaust the boundary of the convex hull. This constructs a regular dodecahedron.

Choose the spherical directions of a face center $F=(0,\phi ,1)$, the midpoint $M=(0,\phi ,0)$ of its edge between $(\pm {\phi }^{-1},\phi ,0)$, and that edge's endpoint $V=({\phi }^{-1},\phi ,0)$. Normalize these to the unit sphere. The three side planes of triangle $FMV$ are $x=0$, $z=0$, and $\mathbf{n}\cdot \mathbf{x}=0$ with $\mathbf{n}=(-\phi ,{\phi }^{-1},-1)$. Their reflections are coordinate sign changes in the first two cases andin the third, since $\Vert \mathbf{n}{\Vert }^2=4$. Substitution in the twenty listed vertices, using ${\phi }^2=\phi +1$, shows that all three reflections permute the vertex set. The side-plane angles give interior angles $\pi /2$ at $M$, $\pi /3$ at $V$, and $\pi /5$ at $F$ because $|n_z|/\Vert \mathbf{n}\Vert =1/2$ and $|n_x|/\Vert \mathbf{n}\Vert =\phi /2=\cos (\pi /5)$. Thus this triangle is congruent to $\Delta$, and its side-generated group is $G$, conjugated by the aligning isometry.

It already has $120$ elements. Conversely, a symmetry of the dodecahedron is determined by the image of one face, one vertex on that face, and the orientation along its boundary: there are at most $12\cdot 5\cdot 2=120$ choices. An isometry fixing these choices fixes that face pointwise and must preserve the polyhedron's interior side, hence is the identity. Therefore the complete symmetry group of the constructed dodecahedron is $G$, including orientation-reversing symmetries.

Let $\Theta =\angle AOB$ and let the sphere have radius $R$. By rotational invariance, condition on $A$ and place it at the north pole. A band at polar angle $\theta$ has surface area $2\pi R^2\sin \theta d\theta$, while the sphere has area $4\pi R^2$. Thus the central angle between independent uniform sphere points has densitywith density zero outside that interval.

Condition now on $A,B$ with their angle fixed at $\theta$. For $\angle AOC$ and $\angle BOC$ to be acute, the unit position vector of $C$ must have positive dot products with both unit vectors of $A$ and $B$. Hence $C$ must lie in the intersection of the two corresponding open hemispheres. The great circles bounding them meet at the two antipodes perpendicular to the plane of $A,B$. Their common hemisphere region is a spherical lune of opening $\pi -\theta$: when $A=B$ it is a hemisphere of opening $\pi$, and as the two normals separate, that opening decreases by $\theta$. More explicitly, take the common boundary antipodes as poles. The longitude conditions each allow an interval of length $\pi$, with their centres separated by $\theta$, so the intersection has longitude width $\pi -\theta$.

Integrating the spherical area element $R^2\sin \phi d\phi d\lambda$ over that lune gives area $2R^2(\pi -\theta )$. Thus the conditional probability that the two angles involving $C$ are acute is $(\pi -\theta )/(2\pi )$. The remaining angle $\Theta$ must itself be acute, so the desired probability isIntegration by parts gives ${\int }_0^{\pi /2}\theta \sin \theta d\theta =1$, while ${\int }_0^{\pi /2}\sin \theta d\theta =1$. ThereforeThis calculates pairwise acute central angles of three uniform sphere points by conditional area, rather than incorrectly treating the three angle events as independent. Boundary right angles have probability zero, so choosing open rather than closed hemispheres does not change the result.

Work on the unit sphere with geodesic edges. A spherical lune of angle $\alpha$ has area ${\int }_0^{\alpha }{\int }_0^{\pi }\sin \theta d\theta d\phi =2\alpha$. The three great circles through the sides of a spherical triangle partition the sphere into four antipodal pairs of triangles. If the original triangle has area $A$ and the other pair representatives have areas $B,C,D$, then $A+B+C+D=2\pi$. The three lunes at its vertices have areas $A+B,A+C,A+D$, soThis proves the spherical excess formula $\boxed{A=\alpha +\beta +\gamma -\pi }$. Triangulate a convex spherical $k$-gon from one vertex into $k-2$ triangles; summing areas and vertex angles givesFor a decomposition of the whole sphere, angles around every vertex sum to $2\pi$ and each edge belongs to two faces. Summing the polygon area formula over all faces therefore givesNow $F=m+n+p$, $2E=4m+5n+6p$, and $3V=2E$, since three edges meet at each vertex. Substituting into Euler's formula yields $2m+n=12$. Nonnegative integer solutions therefore give at most seven pairs:At least three distinct pairs are realized: a dodecahedron gives $(0,12)$, a pentagonal prism gives $(5,2)$, and a cube gives $(6,0)$. Center each convex polyhedron around an interior origin and radially project its faces onto the sphere; edges become great-circle arcs and the resulting spherical faces are convex, preserving the incidence counts. This supplies the required actual decompositions.