Secant line through singular points of a cubic hypersurface

ID: secant-line-through-singular-points-of-a-cubic-hypersurface

Restrict a cubic equation to the affine line through two distinct singular points. At each point the equation and its first directional derivative vanish, so the restricted polynomial has two distinct double roots. A polynomial of degree at most three with this property is identically zero. Hence the whole line lies in the hypersurface. The multiplicity argument works in every characteristic.

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