Question: Is there a polynomial map from $\Bbb R^n$ to $\Bbb R^n$ under which the image of the positive orthant (the set of points with all coordinates positive) is all of $\Bbb R^n$ ?
Some observations:
My intuition is that the answer must be 'no'... but I confess my intuition for this sort of geometric problem is not very well-developed.
Of course it is relatively easy to show that the answer is 'no' when $n=1$. (In fact it seems like a nice homework problem for some calculus students.) But I can't seem to get any traction for $n>1$.
This feels like the sort of thing that should have an easy proof, but then I remember feeling that way the first time I saw the Jacobian conjecture... now I'm wary of statements about polynomial maps of $\Bbb R^n$ !