[math-fun] Affine manifolds
Speaking of affine, there's a famous conjecture in differential geometry (by Shiing-Shen Chern): Define an *affine manifold* to be one having an atlas all of whose transition functions are affine. For example, R^n / x ~ 2x is an affine manifold that's topologically the product of spheres S^1 x S^(n-1). CONJECTURE: The Euler characteristic of any compact affine manifold is equal to 0. This has remained unresolved for over 50 years. --Dan ________________________________________________________________________________________ "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." --Groucho Marx
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affine_manifold for a number of other such --- "Geometry of affine manifolds is essentially a network of longstanding conjectures; most of them proven in low dimension and some other special cases." WFL On 3/11/11, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
Speaking of affine, there's a famous conjecture in differential geometry (by Shiing-Shen Chern):
Define an *affine manifold* to be one having an atlas all of whose transition functions are affine.
For example, R^n / x ~ 2x is an affine manifold that's topologically the product of spheres S^1 x S^(n-1).
CONJECTURE: The Euler characteristic of any compact affine manifold is equal to 0.
This has remained unresolved for over 50 years.
--Dan
________________________________________________________________________________________ "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." --Groucho Marx
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Fred lunnon