On Uncountable Unions and Intersections of Measurable Sets

We consider several natural situations where the union or intersection of an uncountable family of measurable (in various senses) sets with a “good” additional structure is again measurable or may fail to be measurable. We primarily deal with Lebesgue measurable sets and sets with the Baire property. In particular, uncountable unions of sets homeomorphic to a closed Euclidean simplex are considered in detail, and it is shown that the Lebesgue measure and the Baire property differ essentially in this aspect. Another difference between measure and category is illustrated in the case of some uncountable intersections of sets of full measure (comeager sets, respectively). We also discuss a topological form of the Vitali covering theorem, in connection with the Baire property of uncountable unions of certain sets.