Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 14 3 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Choose one projective line from each of two different pairs. They are skew lines by the preceding disjointness result. After a projective linear coordinate change call themFor , , their joining line meets the cubic surface at and a third point. This defines a rational map on the Zariski-open set where that third intersection is distinct and the joining line is not contained in .
More explicitly, because vanishes on both projective lines,The third point is . Both polynomials are nonzero: if either vanished identically, one of the two projective lines would lie in the singular locus. Thus supplies a nonempty Zariski-open set.
Conversely, a point outside lies on the unique joining line whose endpoints have coordinates on and on . This is a rational inverse on the same generic locus. The rational parametrization of a cubic surface from two skew lines givesThe latter contains the affine plane as a dense open subset, as does . Hence is birational to .