Mnëv's universality theorem

Mnëv's universality theorem is a fancy math rule that says you can use one particular shape to create lots of other shapes.

Let's imagine you have a big box of building blocks. You might have lots of different shapes in there - squares, triangles, circles - but with these blocks, you can put them together to make all kinds of different things, like houses or towers.

Mnëv's universality theorem is like that, but with math instead of building blocks. There's one special shape that you can use to create many other shapes using just math rules.

Think of it like this: when you learn to spell a word, you don't have to memorize every single word in the dictionary. Instead, you learn how to make different words by changing the order or the letters in the word. So just like you can make lots of new words using the letters in one word, you can make lots of new shapes using the one special math shape.

This is really helpful for mathematicians who need to work with lots of different shapes but don't want to have to memorize all of them. They can use Mnëv's universality theorem to make new shapes from one shape they already know how to work with.