Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/iii/paper-130/3/iv/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 130 3 iv Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Let be a convergent sequence in the Stone-Čech compactification of the natural numbers, with limit . Each fixed occurs only finitely often: the Hausdorff property gives a neighbourhood of excluding , and eventually the sequence is in that neighbourhood.
If were not eventually equal to , infinitely many terms would differ from . They could not take only finitely many distinct values, because each such value occurs only finitely often. Recursively select a subsequence of pairwise distinct terms, all different from . It still converges to , contradicting the preceding parts. HenceThis establishes no nontrivial convergent sequences in the Stone-Čech compactification for arbitrary sequences, including ones with repetitions.
New to topics? Read the docs here!