Differentiabl structure is defined by tangent bundle and any bundle determines a homotopy class of a map from the manifold to the Grassmanian manifold of the planes whose dimension is the rank of the tangent bundle. Because, I am not sure but..., I guess the homotoply class of such map is descrete group,... so I geuss that the differentiable structure is also discrete.
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You seem to argue that a contractile manifold has a unique smooth structure, which is false. – Moishe Kohan May 14 '20 at 01:57
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This paper constructs a certain moduli space of smooth structures on $\mathbb{R}^4$s which does not have the discrete topology, although note that it is a quotient of the "true moduli space" because some exotic non-diffeomorphic $\mathbb{R}^4$s are identified.
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