# The Schubert Calculus tells us that given 3 general 3-planes A,B,C and # 3 general 2-planes a,b,c in 5-dimensional space, there are 4 partial # flags X < Y such that X meets a, B, and C and Y intersects A in # a 2-dimensional subspace and also meets b and c. # # We show that if A,B,C,a,b,c are chosen to osculate the standard rational # normal curve at the (respective) points 41, 58, 29, -97, 82, 21, then not # all the solutions are real. This disproves the conjecture of Shapiro # and Shapiro, in the original form they stated. # with(linalg): with(Groebner): readlib(realroot): Digits:= 5: Mat := s -> matrix([ [1 , s ,s^2, s^3 , s^4 ], # The flag osculating the rational [0 , 1 ,2*s,3*s^2,4*s^3], # normal curve at the point s. [0 , 0 , 1 , 3*s ,6*s^2], # # [0 , 0 , 1 , x14 , x15 ], # Local coordinates for the partial [1 , 0 ,x23, x24 , x25 ], # flag X < Y [0 , 1 ,x33, x34 , x35 ]]): # (Last 2 rows are X) # W.i are the equations imposed by W on the flag X < Y. # For A.i and a.i, the other 2 maximal minors are redundant. B:=det(submatrix(Mat(-1),[1,2,3,5,6],[1,2,3,4,5])): C:=det(submatrix(Mat(3),[1,2,3,5,6],[1,2,3,4,5])): A1:=det(submatrix(Mat(0),[1,2,3,4,5],[1,2,3,4,5])): A2:=det(submatrix(Mat(0),[1,2,3,4,6],[1,2,3,4,5])): A3:=det(submatrix(Mat(0),[1,2,3,5,6],[1,2,3,4,5])): a1:=det(submatrix(Mat(4),[1,2,5,6],[1,2,3,4])): a2:=det(submatrix(Mat(4),[1,2,5,6],[1,2,3,5])): a3:=det(submatrix(Mat(4),[1,2,5,6],[1,2,4,5])): b:=det(submatrix(Mat(1),[1,2,4,5,6],[1,2,3,4,5])): c:=det(submatrix(Mat(-5),[1,2,4,5,6],[1,2,3,4,5])): G:=gbasis([A1,A2,A3,B,C,a1,a2,a3,b,c], wdeg([1,5,5,5,5,5,5,5],[x14,x15,x23,x24,x25,x33,x34,x35])): lprint(G[1]); fsolve(G[1],x14,complex); quit;