Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2024/iii/paper-109/4/b/solution

For , orthogonally project every member of onto the oriented line . These projections are compact intervals. They are pairwise intersecting because the original sets are, and pairwise intersecting intervals have a common intersection. Let be the midpoint of that common interval and let be its signed coordinate on . Compactness makes continuous, and reversing the orientation gives
Define the continuous antipodal map
The Borsuk-Ulam theorem gives with . Write the common value as . The hyperplane
meets every set in every , because lies in the projection interval of each such set. Thus is the required common hyperplane transversal.

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