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robinhoustonlast Wednesday at 9:19 PM1 replyview on HN

They didn't need to, because it was proven in 1969 (J. H. Conway and R. K. Guy, _Stability of polyhedra_, SIAM Rev. 11, 78–82)


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zuminatorlast Wednesday at 10:11 PM

That article doesn't prove what you say that it does. It just proves because a perpetuum mobile is impossible, it is trivial that a polyhedron must always eventually come to rest on one face. It doesn't assert that the face-down face is always the same face (unistable/monostable). It goes on to query whether or not a uniformly dense object can be constructed so as to be unistable, although if I understand correctly Guy himself had already constructed a 19-faced one in 1968 and knew the answer to be true.

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