First I'll say a few words about forcing axioms and then I'll answer your question. Forcing axioms were developed to provide a unified framework to establish the consistency of a number of combinatorial statements, particularly about the first uncountable cardinal. They began with Solovay and Tennenbaum's proof of the consistency of Souslin's Hypothesis (that every linear order in which there are no uncountable families of pairwise disjoint intervals is necessarily separable). Many of the consequences of forcing axioms, particularly the stronger Proper Forcing Axiom and Martin's Maximum, had the form of classification results: Baumgartner's classification of the isomorphism types of $\aleph_1$-dense sets of reals, Abraham and Shelah's classification of the Aronszajn trees up to club isomorphism, Todorcevic's classification of linear gaps in $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})/\mathrm{fin}$, and Todorcevic's classification of transitive relations on $\omega_1$. A survey of these results (plus many references) can be found in both Stevo Todorcevic's ICM article and my own (the later can be found here). These are accessible to a general audience.

What does all this have to do with the Continuum Problem? It was noticed early on that forcing axioms imply that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. The first proof of this is, I believe, in Foreman, Magidor, and Shelah's seminal paper in Martin's Maximum. Other quite different proofs were given by Caicedo, Todorcevic, Velickovic, and myself. An elementary proof which is purely Ramsey-theoretic in nature is in my article " Open colorings, the continuum, and the second uncountable cardinal" (PAMS, 2002).

Since it is often the case that the combinatorial essence of the proofs of these classification results and that the continuum is $\aleph_2$ are similar, one is left to speculate that perhaps there may some day be a classification result concerning structures of cardinality $\aleph_1$ which already implies that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. There is a candidate for such a classification: the assertion that there are five uncountable linear orders such that every other contains an isomorphic copy of one of these five. Another related candidate for such a classification is the assertion that the Aronszajn lines are well quasi-ordered by embeddability (if $L_i$ $(i < \infty)$ is a sequence of Aronszajn lines, then there is an $i < j$ such that $L_i$ embeds into $L_j$). These are due to myself and Carlos Martinez, respectively. See a discussion of this (with references) in my ICM paper.

First I'll say a few words about forcing axioms and then I'll answer your question. Forcing axioms were developed to provide a unified framework to establish the consistency of a number of combinatorial statements, particularly about the first uncountable cardinal. They began with Solovay and Tennenbaum's proof of the consistency of Souslin's Hypothesis (that every linear order in which there are no uncountable families of pairwise disjoint intervals is necessarily separable). Many of the consequences of forcing axioms, particularly the stronger Proper Forcing Axiom and Martin's Maximum, had the form of classification results: Baumgartner's classification of the isomorphism types of $\aleph_1$-dense sets of reals, Abraham and Shelah's classification of the Aronszajn trees up to club isomorphism, Todorcevic's classification of linear gaps in $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})/\mathrm{fin}$, and Todorcevic's classification of transitive relations on $\omega_1$. A survey of these results (plus many references) can be found in both Stevo Todorcevic's ICM article and my own (the later can be found here¹). These are accessible to a general audience.

What does all this have to do with the Continuum Problem? It was noticed early on that forcing axioms imply that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. The first proof of this is, I believe, in Foreman, Magidor, and Shelah's seminal paper in Martin's Maximum. Other quite different proofs were given by Caicedo, Todorcevic, Velickovic, and myself. An elementary proof which is purely Ramsey-theoretic in nature is in my article " Open colorings, the continuum, and the second uncountable cardinal" (PAMS, 2002).²

Since it is often the case that the combinatorial essence of the proofs of these classification results and that the continuum is $\aleph_2$ are similar, one is left to speculate that perhaps there may some day be a classification result concerning structures of cardinality $\aleph_1$ which already implies that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. There is a candidate for such a classification: the assertion that there are five uncountable linear orders such that every other contains an isomorphic copy of one of these five. Another related candidate for such a classification is the assertion that the Aronszajn lines are well quasi-ordered by embeddability (if $L_i$ $(i < \infty)$ is a sequence of Aronszajn lines, then there is an $i < j$ such that $L_i$ embeds into $L_j$). These are due to myself and Carlos Martinez, respectively. See a discussion of this (with references) in my ICM paper¹.

¹ The Proper Forcing Axiom, Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians Hyderabad, India, 2010, Wayback Machine
² Open colorings, the continuum and the second uncountable cardinal, Wayback Machine

First I'll say a few words about forcing axioms and then I'll answer your question. Forcing axioms were developed to provide a unified framework to establish the consistency of a number of combinatorial statements, particularly about the first uncountable cardinal. They began with Solovay and Tennenbaum's proof of the consistency of Souslin's Hypothesis (that every linear order in which there are no uncountable families of pairwise disjoint intervals is necessarily separable). Many of the consequences of forcing axioms, particularly the stronger Proper Forcing Axiom and Martin's Maximum, had the form of classification results: Baumgartner's classification of the isomorphism types of $\aleph_1$-dense sets of reals, Abraham and Shelah's classification of the Aronszajn trees up to club isomorphism, Todorcevic's classification of linear gaps in $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})/\mathrm{fin}$, and Todorcevic's classification of transitive relations on $\omega_1$. A survey of these results (plus many references) can be found in both Stevo Todorcevic's ICM article and my own (the later can be found here). These are accessible to a general audience.

What does all this have to do with the Continuum Problem? It was noticed early on that forcing axioms imply that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. The first proof of this is, I believe, in Foreman, Magidor, and Shelah's seminal paper in Martin's Maximum. Other quite different proofs were given by Caicedo, Todorcevic, Velickovic, and myself. An elementary proof which is purely Ramsey-theoretic in nature is in my article " Open colorings, the continuum, and the second uncountable cardinal" (PAMS, 2002).

Since it is often the case that the combinatorial essence of the proofs of these classification results and that the continuum is $\aleph_2$ are similar, one is left to speculate that perhaps there may some day be a classification result concerning structures of cardinality $\aleph_1$ which already implies that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. There is a candidate for such a classification: the assertion that there are five uncountable linear orders such that every other contains an isomorphic copy of one of these five. Another related candidate for such a classification is the assertion that the Aronszajn lines are well quasi-ordered by embeddability (if $L_i$ $(i < \infty)$ is a sequence of Aronszajn lines, then there is an $i < j$ such that $L_i$ embeds into $L_j$). These are due to myself and Carlos Martinez, respectively. See a discussion of this (with references) in my ICM paper.

First I'll say a few words about forcing axioms and then I'll answer your question. Forcing axioms were developed to provide a unified framework to establish the consistency of a number of combinatorial statements, particularly about the first uncountable cardinal. They began with Solovay and Tennenbaum's proof of the consistency of Souslin's Hypothesis (that every linear order in which there are no uncountable families of pairwise disjoint intervals is necessarily separable). Many of the consequences of forcing axioms, particularly the stronger Proper Forcing Axiom and Martin's Maximum, had the form of classification results: Baumgartner's classification of the isomorphism types of $\aleph_1$-dense sets of reals, Abraham and Shelah's classification of the Aronszajn trees up to club isomorphism, Todorcevic's classification of linear gaps in $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})/\mathrm{fin}$, and Todorcevic's classification of transitive relations on $\omega_1$. A survey of these results (plus many references) can be found in both Stevo Todorcevic's ICM article and my own (the later can be found here). These are accessible to a general audience.

What does all this have to do with the Continuum Problem? It was noticed early on that forcing axioms imply that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. The first proof of this is, I believe, in Foreman, Magidor, and Shelah's seminal paper in Martin's Maximum. Other quite different proofs were given by Caicedo, Todorcevic, Velickovic, and myself. An elementary proof which is purely Ramsey-theoretic in nature is in my article " Open colorings, the continuum, and the second uncountable cardinal" (PAMS, 2002).

Since it is often the case that the combinatorial essence of the proofs of these classification results and that the continuum is $\aleph_2$ are similar, one is left to speculate that perhaps there may some day be a classification result concerning structures of cardinality $\aleph_1$ which already implies that the continuum is $\aleph_2$. There is a candidate for such a classification: the assertion that there are five uncountable linear orders such that every other contains an isomorphic copy of one of these five. Another related candidate for such a classification is the assertion that the Aronszajn lines are well quasi-ordered by embeddability (if $L_i$ $(i < \infty)$ is a sequence of Aronszajn lines, then there is an $i < j$ such that $L_i$ embeds into $L_j$). These are due to myself and Carlos Martinez, respectively. See a discussion of this (with references) in my ICM paper.