I'm reading Madsen and Tornehave's "From Calculus to Cohomology" and tried to solve this interesting problem regarding knots.
Let $\Sigma\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ be homeomorphic to $\mathbb{S}^k$, show that $H^p(\mathbb{R}^n - \Sigma)$ equals $\mathbb{R}$ for $p=0,n-k-1, n-1$ and $0$ for all other $p$. Here $1\leq k \leq n-2$.
Now the case $p=0$ is obvious from connectedness and the two other cases are easily solved by applying the fact that
$H^{p+1}(\mathbb{R}^{n+1} - A) \simeq H^p(\mathbb{R}^n - A),~~~~p\geq 1$
and
$H^1(\mathbb{R}^n - A) \simeq H^0(\mathbb{R}^n - A)/\mathbb{R}\cdot 1$
So what is my problem, really?
Now instead let's look at this directly from Mayer-Vietoris. If $\hat{D}^k$ is the open unit disk and $\bar{D}^k$ the closed. Then $\mathbb{R}^n - \mathbb{S}^k = (\mathbb{R}^n - \bar{D}^k)\cup (\hat{D}^k)$ and $(\mathbb{R}^n - \bar{D}^k)\cap (\hat{D}^k) = \emptyset$
Now $H^p(\mathbb{R}^n - \bar{D}^k) \simeq H^p(\mathbb{R}^n - \{ 0 \})$ since $\bar{D}^k$ is contractible. And $H^p(\mathbb{R}^n - \{ 0 \})$ is $\mathbb{R}$ if $p=0,n-1$ and $0$ else. Since $\hat{D}^k$ is open star shaped we find it's cohomology to be $\mathbb{R}$ for $p=0$ and $0$ for all other $p$.
This yields and exact sequence
$\cdots\rightarrow 0\overset{I^{\ast}}\rightarrow H^{n-1}(\mathbb{R}^n - \mathbb{S}^k) \overset{J^{\ast}}\rightarrow \mathbb{R} \rightarrow 0\cdots$
So due to exactness I find that $\ker(J^*) = \text{Im}(I^*) = 0$ and that $J^*$ is surjective, hence $H^{n-1}(\mathbb{R}^n - \mathbb{S}^k) \simeq \mathbb{R}$.
But ... If I apply the exact same approach to $p = n-k-1$ my answer would be $0$ for $H^{n-k-1}(\mathbb{R}^n - \mathbb{S}^k)$.
Where does this last approach fail?