TITLE: Are radicals dense in the real closure of an ordered field?
QUESTION [17 upvotes]: Let $F$ be an ordered field and let $R$ denote its real closure.
It is well-known that $F$ is cofinal in $R$, but not necessarily dense.
For example, consider $F=\mathbb{R}(\omega)$ with the order determined by $r<\omega$ for all $r\in \mathbb{R}$, and consider the open interval $(\sqrt{\omega}-1,\sqrt{\omega}+1)$ in $R$, which does not meet $F$.

Question 1. Is always the case that radicals of elements of $F$ in $R$ are dense in $R$? Equivalently, is it possible to find for all $0<\alpha<\beta$ in $R$ an element $\gamma\in F$ and some $n\in \mathbb{N}$ such that
  $\alpha^n<\gamma<\beta^n$?

It is not difficult to see that a positive answer would imply a positive answer to the next question, which is really what I am after.

Question 2.
  Let $a_0,a_1,\dots,a_t\in R$ be distinct elements. Is there always a polynomial $p\in F[x]$ satisfying $p(a_0)<0$ while $p(a_i)>0$ for all $i\in\{1,\dots,t\}$?

The most interesting case is when $a_0,\dots,a_t$ constitute the list of roots of an irreducible polynomial in $F[x]$.

REPLY [2 votes]: Update: the following doesn't answer the question, since the element $\omega^\pi$ is transcendental rather than algebraic.
Let $K$ be an ordered field, and let $$F = \left\{ \alpha = \sum_{k=k_0}^\infty a_k\omega^{-k/d}\Big\vert k_0\in\mathbb{Z},\,d\in\mathbb{Z}_{\geq 1},\, a_k\in K\right\}$$ be the field of Puiseaux series over $K$ ordered lexicographically (take the convention that $a_{k_0}\neq 0$ if $\alpha\neq 0$ and then $\alpha>0$ iff $a_{k_0}>0$).
Note that $F$ is complete with respect to the valuation $v(\alpha) = k_0/d$.  We call $-k_0/d$ the order of $\alpha$ and $a_{k_0} \omega^{-k_0/d}$ the leading term of $\alpha$.
Let $R = F(\omega^\pi)$ where $\pi\in \mathbb{R}$ is any irrational. Then the valuation and order extend to $R$.  In particular, elements of $R$ have leading terms and orders.  Clearly if $\alpha,\beta\in R$ are positive of the same irrational order then no elements of $F$ separate them (the order of any positive element of $F$ is rational, hence either smaller or larger than that of $\alpha,\beta$).  Now let $p(x) = \sum_{i=0}^n a_i x^i \in F[x]$ be a non-constant polynomial. Then for any $\alpha \in R$ of irrational order, the elements $a_i x^i$ (for $a_i\neq 0$) have distinct orders (because $1,\pi$ are linearly independent over $\mathbb{Q}$). It follows that the order of $p(\alpha)$ is irrational and depends only on the order of $\alpha$ (when that is irrational), and in particular that $p$ cannot separate elements of $R$ of the same irrational order.
Remark It is not hard to see that polynomials in $K[x]$ can be used to separate elements of $F$.  More generally, if $K$ is an ordered field and $R$ is the field of multivariable Puiseaux series over $K$ in the variables $\omega_1,\ldots,\omega_r$ where we repeatedly order lexicographically then the same holds.  In other words, the claim is true if $R=F(\omega_1,\ldots,\omega_r)$ where the extensions are successively non-archimedean in that $\omega_i$ is larger than every element of $F(\omega_1,\ldots,\omega_{i-1})$.