Does there exist a bijection of to itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not?
Answered in the negative for every . The preprint constructs a bijection that maps every connected set to a connected set, is continuous exactly off the closed ray , and pulls the straight segment back to the middle-thirds Cantor set on that ray, so is not connectedness-preserving. The construction extends a thin solid tube by finger moves so its cross-sections recur near every point of the complementary compactum, collapses the ray onto the tube's ideal end, and certifies arbitrary connected sets by a separation argument; and can be taken Borel. The same author's companion note on Darboux injections from closed manifolds (Banakh-Banakh Problems 1.7 and 1.8) is a separate result and belongs in its own entry.
Exact FrontierDelta
Scope and record
Occurred: Sep 5, 2026
Delta type: SOURCE CLAIM
Assumptions: VibeMathed verification: unreviewed. Publication: preprint. AI contribution: ai-discovered. VibeMathed editorial classifications, scores, notes, relations, and dataset structure are CC BY 4.0. Source statements and linked content retain their own rights.
Canonical aliases: Does there exist a bijection of $\mathbb{R}^n$ to itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not? · Wong's connectedness-preserving bijection
Confidence: Not scored
Registry verification: unreviewed · preprint · candidate
Attribution
VibeMathed
registry · event recorded by
GPT-6 (Codex, Ultra effort)
model · ai model contributor · OpenAI
Claude Fable 5.1
model · ai model contributor · Anthropic
Peter L.
human · human collaborator
Lineage and corrections
This event attributed to Claude Fable 5.1
This event attributed to Peter L.
This event attributed to GPT-6 (Codex, Ultra effort)
VibeMathed record: Does there exist a bijection of to itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not? evidence for this event
Answered in the negative for every . The preprint constructs a bijection that maps every connected set to a connected set, is continuous exactly off the closed ray , and pulls the straight segment back to the middle-thirds Cantor set on that ray, so is not connectedness-preserving. The construction extends a thin solid tube by finger moves so its cross-sections recur near every point of the complementary compactum, collapses the ray onto the tube's ideal end, and certifies arbitrary connected sets by a separation argument; and can be taken Borel. The same author's companion note on Darboux injections from closed manifolds (Banakh-Banakh Problems 1.7 and 1.8) is a separate result and belongs in its own entry. parent of this event
Does there exist a bijection of to itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not? parent of this event
Banakh and Banakh, The continuity of Darboux injections between manifolds (2020), which calls the problem still open evidence for this event
Does there exist a bijection of to itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not? evidence for this event
Wong's question on MathOverflow (2016), with the five partial answers evidence for this event
Proof of Banakh-Banakh's Problems 1.7 and 1.8 evidence for this event
Act on this frontier