General topology Ordered spaces and set-theoretic topology Counterexample
Long line
Builds on Ordinal numberLexicographic orderSequential compactnessCompact spaceConnected spaceMetrizable space
Counterexample
Let be the first uncountable ordinal. The closed long ray is the set with the lexicographic order and the order topology. The long line is obtained by gluing two copies of along their least point , one of them with the reversed order. The closed long ray is Hausdorff, connected and sequentially compact, but it is not compact and not metrizable.
Remarks
For each countable ordinal , the initial segment of below is a countable stack of half-open intervals, and it is homeomorphic to . So every point of other than has a neighbourhood homeomorphic to an open interval of . A sequence in has a countable supremum of the , because a countable union of countable sets is countable. So the sequence lies in the set of points up to , which is homeomorphic to , and it has a convergent subsequence. The open sets for cover , but no finitely many of them do, because has no largest element. A sequentially compact metrizable space is compact, so is not metrizable. For the same reason the long line is a connected Hausdorff space, locally homeomorphic to , that is not second-countable and not metrizable. So being Hausdorff and locally Euclidean does not make a space a topological manifold in the usual sense, which also asks for second countability.
Reading path
To understand this page from the ground up, read these 7 pages in order. The foundations come first.
Show the path as a graph
- no evidence level
- Compact space concept
- Connected space concept
- Lexicographic order concept
- Metrizable space concept
- Ordinal number concept
- Sequential compactness concept
- Long line counterexample
Further reading
About this page
| Tag | 1DKCNS63DH |
|---|---|
| URI | m2://1DKCNS63DH |
| Kind | counterexample |
| Writing | W0 stub |
| MSC | 54G20, 54F05, 57N99 |
| Uses | Ordinal number, Lexicographic order, Sequential compactness, Compact space, Connected space, Metrizable space |
| Changed | 2 November 2026 |
Markdown · JSON · Edit on GitHub
What this page needs for W1
- an inventory row: the row of the inventory that the node accounts for (0 of 1)
- a source with a locator (0 of 1)
- edge refutes or not_instance_of out (0 of 1)
The writing levels say how complete the text of a page is. They do not measure its truth.
What links here
No page links to this page yet.