2
$\begingroup$

Yesterday while playing with the Geogebra application, I discovered a fairly initial theorem in the conic sections, and I don't know if it was already discovered or not, please if there are references on the subject, please mention them, and also if someone manages to prove it, that would be nice. enter image description here

If we have a conic section, and we choose five points from it and draw the tangents in them, and we designate the ten points to intersect the tangents, and then we choose five points from which a non-degenerate conic section passes, and we draw that section, and then we draw the conic section that passes through the remaining five points, then the centers of the three conic sections will lie on one line.

$\endgroup$
2
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Note: Applying an appropriate projective transformation, we may assume the initial conic is a circle. $\endgroup$
    – Blue
    Commented Jun 30 at 7:28
  • $\begingroup$ I would like to point out an additional note, which is that there is more than one way to choose the five points out of the ten to create a non-degenerate conic section. The centers of all of these conic sections will not lie on one line, but we will obtain different lines depending on the method of choosing the points. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 30 at 9:32

1 Answer 1

1
$\begingroup$

You made a nice observation, and it is implicit in the theory of the Poncelet Porism and the theory of conic pencils. It's a big topic - I won't offer any proofs - but hopefully I can point you to some references that will provide a starting point for understanding your observation. Along the way I'll point out some connections with previous observations you have made.

The textbook example of a conic pencil is the set of all conics passing through a given set of four points. A less discussed example is the set of all conics tangent to a given set of four lines, which we'll refer to as a tangential pencil. In a previous question you asked what the locus of the centers of a conic pencil would be - it turns out to be the so-called nine point conic. Now we can ask the same question for a tangential pencil. Surprisingly the centers are all on a straight line (the so-called Newton-Gauss line of the four tangential lines, apparently named after Newton because he discovered this fact).

There's a proof of this in Russell, Pure Geometry, pg 241. theorem statement But you might find it more fun to model this in Geogebra.

Why is this relevant? Because the three conics in your original question are members of the same tangential pencil. As a consequence, the centers are collinear.

Why are they in a tangential pencil? Now we have to get into the weeds of Poncelet's Theorem. A good but challenging reference is Poncelet's porism: a long story of renewed discoveries, I. Your diagram is echoed in Figure 30 of that paper: Poncelet corollary

The general Poncelet Porism setup takes $n$ points on a conic and then connects them to make a polygon which circumscribes a new conic (and by making more connections circumscribes more nested conics). These conics belong to a common conic pencil. Your construction intersects the tangents of the $n$ points and creates conics. This is the dual of the general construction, and the result is conics that belong to a tangential pencil (which is the dual of a normal pencil).

Fun fact: in an earlier question you asked about the conic passing through the eight points of contact of the four common tangents to two conics. This conic ($F=0$) is referenced in Figure 20 of the paper, and used in the analysis of Poncelet's Theorem.

Finally, check out the question Family of conics generated by two conics and my answer to that question, as well as the references in the answer.

One final remark. The conic pencils in Poncelet's Theorem have four base points, but they are imaginary. Similarly, the conics in the dual of Poncelet's Theorem (and the conics in your question) are tangent to four imaginary lines.

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ I didn't expect these theorems to be so interconnected in one topic, thank you for giving me the tip of the thread to discover the interdependence of all these ideas. @brainjam $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 5 at 3:34

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .