Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography, & More · Gary Arndt

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Encore)

February 23, 2026·16 min·1 clip

Planck proposed energy comes in discrete packets, but thought it was just a mathematical trick.

This episode explores the ultraviolet catastrophe, a late 19th-century physics problem that classical theories couldn't solve, leading Max Planck to propose quantized energy. It traces how this idea, initially doubted by Planck himself, sparked the development of quantum mechanics through contributions from Einstein, Bohr, and others, revolutionizing our understanding of reality.

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