How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
FALSE:
Statement
FALSE. Assume the Axiom of Choice (The Axiom of Choice). The continuum has cardinality :
(Cardinal sum , product and exponentiation , and why they are written apart from the ordinal operations, The successor cardinal , the alephs , the beths , successor and limit cardinals, and the identifications and ).
The claim is plausible because ZFC really does leave the value of open over a wide range of alephs, and is a natural-looking candidate: it is above , as Assuming the Axiom of Choice, , and Cantor's theorem in cardinal form: requires, and it is not a successor, so no obvious counting argument seems to touch it. Nevertheless ZFC refutes it outright, and the refutation is short.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The Axiom of Choice.
for every infinite cardinal ; in particular (Assuming the Axiom of Choice: for every infinite cardinal , and ; in particular , Cofinality , and regular and singular cardinals).
is a cardinal strictly above (Assuming the Axiom of Choice, , and Cantor's theorem in cardinal form: , Cardinal (initial ordinal) and cardinality).
Ordinals satisfy trichotomy and , so and cannot both hold (Trichotomy and well-ordering of the ordinals, Basic closure properties of ordinals).
Refutation
Suppose, for contradiction, that .
By [L1] and [L3], .
By [L2], .
Equal ordinals have equal cofinalities, so the assumption turns step 1.3 into , contradicting step 1.2 by [L4]; therefore .
Remarks
What is being used, and what is not. The refutation uses only Assuming the Axiom of Choice: for every infinite cardinal , and ; in particular , itself a consequence of König's theorem: assuming the Axiom of Choice, if for every then , together with the ZF computation of . No independence result is used anywhere: this is a theorem of ZFC, not a statement about what ZFC fails to decide, and it would be equally true in any model of ZFC.
Which values remain possible is a different question, and is not settled here. The cofinality constraint excludes candidate values whose cofinality is ; it does not identify the value of , and the choice ledger at the end of the main page records what is and is not decided.
The parallel false claim about is of a different kind. "" is not refutable here at all: it is the continuum hypothesis, and neither it nor its negation follows from anything on this page or on the pages this one rests on, as What each result on this page costs in choice, and where the continuum escapes what ZFC can decide records. That difference is exactly why the present statement is on the page and the other is not: a false statement in this library carries a refutation, and a refutation must be a proof.
Depends on
- Assuming the Axiom of Choice: $\kappa < \kappa^{\operatorname{cf}(\kappa)}$ for every infinite cardinal $\kappa$, and $\operatorname{cf}(2^{\kappa}) > \kappa$; in particular $\operatorname{cf}(2^{\aleph_0}) > \aleph_0$
- $\aleph_0$ is regular in ZF; assuming the Axiom of Choice every successor aleph $\aleph_{\alpha+1}$ is regular; $\operatorname{cf}(\aleph_\omega) = \aleph_0$, so $\aleph_\omega$ is singular, and under choice it is the least singular infinite cardinal
- Cofinality $\operatorname{cf}(\alpha)$, and regular and singular cardinals
- The successor cardinal $\kappa^{+}$, the alephs $\aleph_\alpha$, the beths $\beth_\alpha$, successor and limit cardinals, and the identifications $\aleph_0 = \omega$ and $\aleph_1 = \omega_1$
- Cardinal sum $\kappa \oplus \lambda$, product $\kappa \otimes \lambda$ and exponentiation $\kappa^{\lambda}$, and why they are written apart from the ordinal operations
- Assuming the Axiom of Choice, $2^{\kappa} = \lvert \mathcal{P}(\kappa) \rvert$, and Cantor's theorem in cardinal form: $\kappa < 2^{\kappa}$
- The Axiom of Choice
- Cardinal (initial ordinal) and cardinality
- Basic closure properties of ordinals
- Trichotomy and well-ordering of the ordinals
Used by
Nothing in the library uses this result yet.
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 91 results over 29 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- UCL, Axiomatic Set Theory, Ch. 4: Cardinal Arithmetic (standard reference, not scraped)
- Cardinality of the continuum (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Easton's theorem (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)