Problem #505: Is every set of diameter $1$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ the union of...

---

Progress

Borsuk's problem. This is trivially true for $n=1$ and easy for $n=2$. For $n=3$ it is true, which was proved by Eggleston [Eg55].

In [Er81b] Erdős wrote 'I suspect that it is false for sufficiently high dimensions'.

Indeed, the answer is in fact no in general, as shown by Kahn and Kalai [KaKa93], who proved that it is false for $n>2014$. The current smallest $n$ where Borsuk's conjecture is known to be false is $n=64$, a result of Brouwer and Jenrich [BrJe14].

If $\alpha(n)$ is the smallest number of pieces of diameter $<1$ required (so Borsuk's original conjecture was that $\alpha(n)=n+1$) then Kahn and Kalai's construction shows that $\alpha(n)\geq (1.2)^{\sqrt{n}}$. The best upper bound, due to Schramm [Sc88], is that\[\alpha(n) \leq ((3/2)^{1/2}+o(1))^{n}.\]