Let T (x, ε) denote the first hitting time of the disc of radius ε centered at x for Brownian motion on the two dimensional torus T2 . We prove that supx∈T2 T (x, ε)/| log ε|2 → 2/π as ε → 0. The same applies to Brownian motion on any smooth, compact connected, two-dimensional, Riemannian manifold with unit area and no boundary. As a consequence, we prove a conjecture, due to Aldous (1989), that the number of steps it takes a simple random walk to cover all points of the lattice torus Z2 is asymptotic to 4n2 (log.
