Jensen's covering theorem


In set theory, Jensen's covering theorem states that if 0# does not exist then every uncountable set of ordinals is contained in a constructible set of the same cardinality. Informally this conclusion says that the constructible universe is close to the universe of all sets. The first proof appeared in. Silver later gave a fine structure free proof using his machines and finally gave an even simpler proof.
The converse of Jensen's covering theorem is also true: if 0# exists then the countable set of all cardinals less than ℵω cannot be covered by a constructible set of cardinality less than ℵω.
In his book Proper Forcing, Shelah proved a strong form of Jensen's covering lemma.