Something that may be of interest to CS people and reveals the complexity of the unit sphere is the following problem:<p>Find an efficient (class of) algorithm(s) to select a large number N of uniformly distributed points on S^2, where "uniformly distributed" is given in a more flexible sense than the usual one. For instance, you may want to minimize the Weyl discrepancy between average and integral, or you may want to focus more on minimizing the number of ε-clusters of distances.<p>One of the most elegant approaches to this problem is the classic work of Lubotzky, Phillips and Sarnak: Hecke Operators and Distributing Points on the Sphere I and II.
They translate the problem to one of generating good sequences of elements of SO(3), which they attack with a combination of harmonic analysis on the semisimple groups, homogeneous dynamics and number theory with Hecke operators as their central tool.