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.
The long ray is a linear continuum, hence connected; every one of its at most countable subsets is bounded above, assuming countable choice
Statement
Let be the closed long ray with its lexicographic order and its order topology (The closed long ray under the lexicographic order, and the long line, with the order topology). Then:
- is a linear continuum (The order topology of a linearly ordered set, with the open rays as a subbasis; order-convex sets, order-density, the least upper bound property, and linear continua): it has at least two elements, it is order-dense, and it has the least upper bound property.
- is connected, and so is every order-convex subset of ; in particular every initial segment is connected.
- Assuming the Axiom of Countable Choice (The Axiom of Countable Choice ()): every at most countable subset of (Finite, countably infinite, countable, uncountable) has an upper bound in ; so no at most countable subset of is unbounded above.
Claims 1 and 2 are theorems of ZF. Claim 3 carries the hypothesis because it is inherited whole from Assuming countable choice: every at most countable subset of is bounded below , so no at most countable subset of is cofinal in it, and a supremum of at most countably many at most countable ordinals is at most countable, whose own statement carries it, and it is spent at exactly one step below.
Nothing here says is path-connected, and this proof gives no path between two of its points; that question needs an order isomorphism of each initial segment with , which is not constructed on this page.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The closed long ray with the lexicographic order and its order topology.
The lexicographic order on is a total order with least element ; means , or and ; every occurring satisfies (The closed long ray under the lexicographic order, and the long line, with the order topology, Partial order and partially ordered set, Intervals of : the nine order-convex forms, nondegeneracy, and length).
For a set of ordinals, is an ordinal, it is an upper bound of under , and it is every upper bound of ; holds exactly when ; is an ordinal with , and any two ordinals are comparable (Basic closure properties of ordinals, Trichotomy and well-ordering of the ordinals, Ordinal (von Neumann), Upper bound, least upper bound, and strict upper bound).
The elements of are exactly the at most countable ordinals, and is a limit ordinal, so implies (The first uncountable ordinal , is uncountable, every ordinal below it is at most countable, it is a cardinal and a limit ordinal, and its existence is a theorem of ZF, Successor and limit ordinals).
has the least upper bound property and least upper bounds in it are unique; for reals one has ; gives (Complete ordered field (least-upper-bound property), Suprema and infima are unique, Lower bound, bounded below, bounded set).
A linear continuum is a linearly ordered set with at least two elements that is order-dense and has the least upper bound property; a linear continuum and each of its order-convex subsets are connected in the order topology (The order topology of a linearly ordered set, with the open rays as a subbasis; order-convex sets, order-density, the least upper bound property, and linear continua, A linear continuum is connected in its order topology, and so is every order-convex subset of it, Separation of a topological space, connected and disconnected spaces, clopen sets, and connected subsets).
Assuming , every at most countable satisfies with for every (Assuming countable choice: every at most countable subset of is bounded below , so no at most countable subset of is cofinal in it, and a supremum of at most countably many at most countable ordinals is at most countable, claim (a), The Axiom of Countable Choice ()).
A nonempty set is at most countable exactly when some surjection it exists (A nonempty set is at most countable iff it is a surjective image of , Finite, countably infinite, countable, uncountable).
Proof
has at least two elements, namely and , which differ and satisfy by [A1] and [A4].
is order-dense. Let . If then and lies strictly between, by [A4]. If then by [A4], so lies strictly above and strictly below , its first coordinate being .
Let be nonempty with an upper bound , and put , a nonempty set of ordinals with for every ; so is an ordinal with , hence by [A2] and [A3].
For claim 3 let be at most countable. If then is an upper bound of by [A1] and there is nothing more to prove, so assume and let , a nonempty subset of .
Suppose first , and put , which is nonempty and bounded above by ; let in , which exists and is unique by [A4], with .
Suppose instead ; then every satisfies , since by [A2] and .
is at most countable: by [A7] there is a surjection , and composing it with the first-coordinate map gives a surjection , so [A7] applies again.
In the case of step 2.1 with , the element is the least upper bound of : it bounds , since has and, when , so ; and any upper bound of has , because contains an element with first coordinate , and if then bounds so .
In the case of step 2.1 with , the element is the least upper bound of : it bounds , since every has ; and an upper bound cannot have , containing an element with first coordinate , nor , since then would bound and give against ; so , that is by [A2], and . Here by [A3].
In the case of step 2.2, the element is the least upper bound of : it bounds , since every has ; and if an upper bound had then would not bound by [A2], so some has and the corresponding element of exceeds — impossible; so and .
By [A6] the ordinal lies in and satisfies for every ; this is the one step at which is spent.
Steps 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 exhaust the cases and give a least upper bound in each, so has the least upper bound property; with steps 1.1 and 1.2 this makes a linear continuum by [A5]. This is claim 1.
Claim 2 follows: is connected and every order-convex subset of is connected by [A5], and each initial segment is order-convex, being defined by an inequality closed under passing to intermediate points.
Then by [A3], and is an upper bound of : every has , hence by [A2] and step 3.4, so . This is claim 3.
Remarks
-
Why the least upper bound argument splits into three cases and not two. The supremum of a set of blocks may be attained in a block, in which case the real supremum inside that block either is attained below (step 3.1) or escapes to the top of the block (step 3.2), and the escape has to be caught by the next block's least element. The third case is that the blocks themselves have no largest member (step 3.3). Each case produces a different element of , and omitting the middle one is the standard slip: it is exactly the configuration in which the naive answer is not an element of at all.
-
What countable choice buys, and what it does not. It is used at exactly one step, and only through Assuming countable choice: every at most countable subset of is bounded below , so no at most countable subset of is cofinal in it, and a supremum of at most countably many at most countable ordinals is at most countable. It says nothing about claims 1 and 2, which are proved in ZF, and is not needed to know that has no greatest element, which is immediate from The closed long ray under the lexicographic order, and the long line, with the order topology.
-
The consequence that makes the long ray useful. Claim 3 says that approaching the far end of cannot be done along an at most countable set. That is what separates from every half-line built earlier: in the naturals are unbounded, whereas in no at most countable set is.
Depends on
- The closed long ray $\omega_1 \times [0,1)$ under the lexicographic order, and the long line, with the order topology
- The order topology of a linearly ordered set, with the open rays as a subbasis; order-convex sets, order-density, the least upper bound property, and linear continua
- A linear continuum is connected in its order topology, and so is every order-convex subset of it
- Basic closure properties of ordinals
- Trichotomy and well-ordering of the ordinals
- Ordinal (von Neumann)
- Successor and limit ordinals
- The first uncountable ordinal $\omega_1 := \aleph(\omega)$
- $\omega_1$ is uncountable, every ordinal below it is at most countable, it is a cardinal and a limit ordinal, and its existence is a theorem of ZF
- Assuming countable choice: every at most countable subset of $\omega_1$ is bounded below $\omega_1$, so no at most countable subset of $\omega_1$ is cofinal in it, and a supremum of at most countably many at most countable ordinals is at most countable
- The Axiom of Countable Choice ($\mathrm{AC}_\omega$)
- Finite, countably infinite, countable, uncountable
- A nonempty set is at most countable iff it is a surjective image of $\mathbb{N}$
- Complete ordered field (least-upper-bound property)
- Suprema and infima are unique
- Lower bound, bounded below, bounded set
- Intervals of $\mathbb{R}$: the nine order-convex forms, nondegeneracy, and length
- Upper bound, least upper bound, and strict upper bound
- Partial order and partially ordered set
- Separation of a topological space, connected and disconnected spaces, clopen sets, and connected subsets
Used by
- The long ray is connected and locally connected, every proper initial segment is order-convex and connected, and, assuming countable choice, no at most countable subset is cofinal Example
- Every closed initial segment of the long ray is compact; the long ray is not compact; and, assuming countable choice, it is countably compact and not Lindel"of Theorem
Cited to discharge well-definedness by The closed long ray ω₁ × [0,1) under the lexicographic order, and the long line, with the order topology.
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 118 results over 23 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
- Long line (topology) (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Linear continuum (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- MIT OpenCourseWare, The Long Line (standard reference, not scraped)