Topology of a 4D universe for every 3-manifold (Q2315299)

A 4D \textit{universe} (resp. 4D \textit{punctured universe}) \(U\) is a connected oriented open 4-dimensional manifold with every closed oriented \(3\)-manifold \(M\) (resp. punctured closed \(3\)-manifold \(M\)) embedded. Every universe is a punctured universe, but the converse is not true. A \textit{full} universe \(U\) is a universe such that every \(M\) admits an embedding \(k:M\to U\) such \(U\backslash k(M)\) is connected and also admits an embedding in \(U\) such that \(U{\backslash}k(M)\) is not connected. For a spherical shell \(S^3{\times}\mathbb{R}\) properly embedded in a \(5\)-dimensional open manifold \(W\), the author defines a collision modification on two distinct \(3\)-sphere fibers that changes \(S^3{\times}\mathbb{R}\) into an open \(4\)-manifold \(S^3{\times}\mathbb{R}\#S^2{\times}S^2\#S^1{\times}S^3\) and shows that a full universe \(U\) in \(W\) can be constructed by infinitely many such collision modifications. In a previous paper [Topology Appl. 196, Part B, 575--593 (2015; Zbl 1334.57023)] the author defined ``topological indices'' (in terms of the ranks of the images \(k_* (H_2 (M))\subset H_2 (U)\) for all closed \(M\)) and showed that certain of these indices must be \(+\infty\). He defines signature invariants and develops an inequality involving these invariants and the 2nd Betti number to prove the main result: If \(X\) is a non-compact oriented \(4\)-manifold with finite second Betti number, then there is a punctured \(3\)-manifold \(M\) which is not embeddable in \(X\). As a corollary he obtains the result that the second Betti number of a 4D punctured universe is \(+\infty\).