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Ultrafilters and automorphisms of the complex field

It is well-known that it is consistent with $ZF$ that the only automorphisms of the complex field $\mathbb{C}$ are the identity map and complex conjugation. For example, we have that ...
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Dropping three bodies

Consider the usual three-body problem with Newtonian $1/r^2$ force between masses. Let the three masses start off at rest, and not collinear. Then they will become collinear a finite time ...
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Volumes of Sets of Constant Width in High Dimensions

Background The n dimensional Euclidean ball of radius 1/2 has width 1 in every direction. Namely, when you consider a pair of parallel tangent hyperplanes in any direction the distance between them ...
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The topology of Arithmetic Progressions of primes

The primary motivation for this question is the following: I would like to extract some topological statistics which capture how arithmetic progressions of prime numbers "fit together" in a manner ...
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Grothendieck-Teichmuller conjecture

(1) In "Esquisse d'un programme", Grothendieck conjectures Grothendieck-Teichmuller conjecture: the morphism $$G_{\mathbb{Q}} \longrightarrow Aut(\widehat{T})$$ is an isomorphism. Here ...
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Functor that maps to both $KO^n$ and $KO^{-n}$

(my question is also meaningful for complex K-theory, but since Kn(X) is always isomorphic to K-n(X), it's less interesting) I start by recalling the analytic definition of KO-theory: The following ...
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Are there lots of integer homology three-spheres?

The problem of counting combinatorial three-spheres with $N$ simplices has implications for some partition functions in physics (see a paper by Benedetti and Ziegler for more background and ...
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On the (derived) dual to the James construction.

Background If $X$ is a based space then the James construction on $X$ is the space $J(X)$ given by $$X \quad \cup \quad X^{\times 2} \quad \cup \quad X^{\times 3} \quad \cup \quad \cdots$$ in ...
Let $N$ be a positive integer and let $P \subset \mathbb{C}$ be a polygon whose vertices are of the form $(a_1+b_1 i)/N$, $(a_2+b_2 i)/N$, ..., $(a_r+b_r i)/N$, with $a_j + b_j i$ being various ...