Mathematician Wins Abel Prize for Exotic 7-Dimensional Spheres

ATranPV
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Mathematics news on Phys.org
Maybe I'll post something to explain what is going on:

A homeomorphism between two spaces is a bijection such that it is continuous and it's inverse is continuous to. For example, ]0,1[ and ]0,2[ are homeomorphic because there is a bijection (f:]0,1[\rightarrow ]0,2[:x\rightarrow 2x) which is evidently continuous, and also it's inverse ]0,2[\rightarrow ]0,1[ is continuous.

Now, a somewhat stronger property is that of a diffeomorphism. While a homeomorphism can be a very rough function, diffeomorphisms are very smooth and nice. Formally, a diffeomorphism is a bijection which is smooth (i.e. all derivatives exist) and whose inverse is smooth too.

Now, what are exotic spheres? Well, an exotic sphere is a space that is homeomorphic to the sphere, but not diffeomorphic. So there exists a bijection which is continuous in both ways, but there is no bijection that is smooth in both ways.
The existence of exotic spheres came as a real surprise to many differential geometers, because it shows that there are spaces which look alike the sphere, but which are no spheres.

The fun (and annoying) thing is that there is no way for us to visualize the exotic spheres. Indeed, there are no exotic spheres in three dimensions (thus any three-dimensional space which is homeomorphic to the sphere is also diffeomorphic). You'll need to go to higher dimensions to visualize this. This makes it quite clear that exotic spheres are very difficult things to handle. And this is indeed true: exotic spheres are (to me) a quite difficult matter...
 
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. In Dirac’s Principles of Quantum Mechanics published in 1930 he introduced a “convenient notation” he referred to as a “delta function” which he treated as a continuum analog to the discrete Kronecker delta. The Kronecker delta is simply the indexed components of the identity operator in matrix algebra Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/what-exactly-is-diracs-delta-function/ by...
Fermat's Last Theorem has long been one of the most famous mathematical problems, and is now one of the most famous theorems. It simply states that the equation $$ a^n+b^n=c^n $$ has no solutions with positive integers if ##n>2.## It was named after Pierre de Fermat (1607-1665). The problem itself stems from the book Arithmetica by Diophantus of Alexandria. It gained popularity because Fermat noted in his copy "Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et...
Thread 'Imaginary pythagorus'
I posted this in the Lame Math thread, but it's got me thinking. Is there any validity to this? Or is it really just a mathematical trick? Naively, I see that i2 + plus 12 does equal zero2. But does this have a meaning? I know one can treat the imaginary number line as just another axis like the reals, but does that mean this does represent a triangle in the complex plane with a hypotenuse of length zero? Ibix offered a rendering of the diagram using what I assume is matrix* notation...

Similar threads

Replies
1
Views
4K
Replies
1
Views
3K
Replies
7
Views
3K
Replies
7
Views
4K
Replies
1
Views
3K
Replies
5
Views
4K
Replies
1
Views
2K
Replies
1
Views
3K
Replies
1
Views
3K
Replies
4
Views
10K
Back
Top