If is the least omega-measurable cardinal and witnesses it, failure of -completeness partitions a member of into fewer than fibres, none belonging to . The pushforward ultrafilter under the fibre-index map is then a nonprincipal countably complete measure on a smaller cardinal, a contradiction. Thus is -complete and is a measurable cardinal.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 121 3 e Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take the least omega-measurable cardinal , with a countably complete ultrafilter on that is nonprincipal. We prove that is -complete. This will give .
Suppose , for , and . Then belongs to . For let be the least with . The pushforward ultrafilteris a countably complete ultrafilter on ; this uses , so restricts to an ultrafilter on . For each , the fibre is contained in , hence is not in . Thus is nonprincipal. If is finite or countable, countable completeness already rules this out. Otherwise would be an omega-measurable cardinal, contradicting minimality of .
Therefore every intersection of fewer than members of lies in . Since is uncountable, it is a measurable cardinal. This proves that the least omega-measurable cardinal is measurable, even if the originally supplied cardinal carried only a countably complete ultrafilter.