Originally posted by Palynka
Yes, the easiest one comes from stereographic projection, like I said.
definitely true! i just thought that an algebraic interpretation might be more accessible if one didn't know about stereographic projection from the plane -> sphere.
though, i'm not sure that the question is necessarily "solved." even without thinking about the implications of "physics sight" with questions of the size of a photon and the size of a point, it seems that the truly interesting mathematical "line of sight" question has more to do with the density of the rationals on the real line.
yes, there are infinitely many rationals in the reals, and similarly infinitely many rational points on the surface of the sphere in question. but it is a
denumerable infinity... much smaller than the infinity of the continuum, which exists as a result of the addition of the irrationals to the rationals in defining the real line. i would say, in fact, that there are many more points on the surface of the sphere that can NOT be expressed by solely rational numbers. but does a single point allow "sight?" or do we need an interval, (or in this case more accurately a region) that would constitute a "hole" in the sphere? i think this is more in the spirit of the original problem, and we need to either prove or disprove the existence of a whole sufficiently "large" to allow "sight." ... perhaps an epsilon/delta proof of some part anyone? i'm too out of it right now to really contemplate but this seems right up the alley of some of the other math guys here! 🙂