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On a conjectured analogue to Clifford's chain in [4]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

M. S. Longuet-Higgins
M. S. Longuet-Higgins
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Extract

Clifford's well-known chain of theorems concerning circles in a plane may be stated as follows (the first two links being trivial):

(C2) Given any point A, and through it two circles C1 and C2, these meet again in a point A12, say.

(C3) Given three circles C1, C2, C3 through A, the three points A23, A13, An lie on a circle C123, say.

(C4) Given four circles C1,…,C4 through A, the four circles C234,…,C123 meet in a point A1234 (Wallace(1)).

(C5) Given five circles C1,…,C5 through A, the five points A2345,…,A1234 lie on a circle C12345 (Miquel (2)).

And so on (Clifford(3)).

Grace (4) showed that in three dimensions [3], there is no direct analogue to Clifford's chain, but in [4] he noted the following:

(G4) Given any point A in [4], and through it four hyperspheres S1,…, S4, these meet again in a point A1234, say.

(G5) Given five hyperspheres Sl,…,S5 through a point A, the five points A2345, A1234 lie on a hypersphere S12345, say.

(G6) Given six hyperspheres Sl,…, S7 through A, the six hyperspheres S23456,…, A12345 have in common a point A123456.

This leads naturally to the conjecture

(G7) Given seven hyperspheres Sl,…, S7 through A, the seven points A234567,…, A123456 lie on a hypersphere S1234567.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 37 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1973

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References

REFERENCES

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