On some problem of Borsuk concerning decompositions of shapes into prime factors (Q5963986)

The Cartesian product \(X\times Y\) represents the product in the category of topological spaces and continuous mappings. The notion of the product generalizes to every category. One may ask whether the shape functor preserves products. It does when \(X\) and \(Y\) are polyhedra or compact Hausdorff spaces. So when \(Sh(X\times Y) = Sh(X)\times Sh(Y)\), then \(Sh(X)\) and \(Sh(Y)\) are called factors. \(Sh(X)\) is prime if it is non-trivial and cannot be decomposed into a product of two non-trivial shapes. In dimension greater than 3 there are more results treating such decompositions which need not be unique. The author treats dimension 3 and shows the existence of a 3-dimensional continuum with two different decompositions into a direct product of prime factors in the shape category. The examples are constructed as the character groups of discrete torsion free Abelian groups having certain properties.