12 questions linked to/from Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts
5k views

### Is there an “elementary” proof of the infinitude of completely split primes?

Let $K$ be a Galois extension of the rationals with degree $n$. The Chebotarev Density Theorem guarantees that the rational primes that split completely in $K$ have density $1/n$ and thus there are ...
6k views

### Has Fermat's Last Theorem per se been used?

There is a long tradition of mathematicians remarking that FLT in itself is a rather isolated claim, attractive only because of its simplicity. And people often note a great thing about current ...
248 views

### Proving infinitely many primes using algebraic geometry ideas

There are at least two well known proofs of the infinitude of primes (Euclid's original one and Euler's proof using L-series) and both of them can be extended to prove more general statements of the ...
34k views

### Proofs that require fundamentally new ways of thinking

I do not know exactly how to characterize the class of proofs that interests me, so let me give some examples and say why I would be interested in more. Perhaps what the examples have in common is ...
477 views

### Reference request: Recovering a Riemannian metric from the distance function

Let $M = (M, g)$ be a Riemannian manifold, and let $p \in M$. Writing $d$ for the geodesic distance in $M$, there is a function $$d(-, p)^2 : M \to \mathbb{R}.$$ This function is smooth near $p$. ...
461 views

### Are the following subsets of a Hilbert space always homeomorphic?

Let $F$ be a infinite-dimensional complex Hilbert space, with inner product $\langle\cdot\;| \;\cdot\rangle$, the norm $\|\cdot\|$, the 1-sphere $S(0,1)=\{x\in F;\;\|x\|=1\}$ and let $\mathcal{B}(F)$ ...
12k views

### Proof that pi is transcendental that doesn't use the infinitude of primes

I just taught the classical impossible constructions for the first time, and in finding my class a reference for the transcendence of pi, I found a dearth of distinct proofs. In particular, those ...
1k views

### When is the graph of a function a dense set?

Let $f: \mathbb R \to \mathbb R$ be any function. When is the graph of $f$ dense in $\mathbb R^2$? The only examples I know for this are for non-measurable functions, but is that a necessary condition?...
671 views

### Use of infinitude of primes in the Green-Tao theorem [closed]

In a video I watched last night on nuking mathematical mosquitos, Matt Parker gave the following proof of the infinitude of primes: suppose there are finitely many primes. The Green-Tao theorem says ...
2k views

### Non-separable Banach space

The vector space $C_b(\mathbb R)$ of bounded continuous functions on $\mathbb R$ is non-separable: it is possible to produce a direct proof of this fact, mimicking the standard proof for the non-...