If $f : S^n \to \R^n$ is continuous and antipode-preserving, then there exists a point $x \in S^n$ such that $f(x) = 0$ .

Proof

Use standard stereographic projection, we can see $N$ and $S$ charts gives exactly the same coordinate system at equator (i.e. where its embedding coordinate $(x_1, \dots, x_{n+1})$ with $x_{n+1} = 0$ ). This also tells the equator is a $S^{n-1}$ in $\R^n$ because $x_1^2 + \dots + x_n^2 = 1$ .

By continuous and antipode-preserving, $f$ preserves such an equator (we denote $E$ ) to $S^{n-1}$ (with scale) and $f(E)$ must bound a set contains $0 \in \R^n$ .

By continuous, both of two open sets of $S^n$ , complement of $E$ , needs to be mapped to cover the subset of $\R^n$ which bounded by $f(E)$ , so there exists a point $x \in S^n$ such that $f(x) = 0$ .