Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

by Charles Seife

According to the Rayleigh-Jeans equation, every object is constantly radiating an infinite amount of energy, no matter what its temperature is; even an ice cube would be radiating enough ultraviolet rays, x rays, and gamma rays to vaporize everything around. This was the “ultraviolet catastrophe.” Zero wavelength equals infinite energy; zero and infinity conspired to break a nice, neat system of laws. Solving this paradox quickly became the leading puzzle in physics. Rayleigh and Jeans had done nothing wrong. They used equations that physicists thought were valid, manipulated them in an accepted way, and came out with an answer that didn’t reflect the way the world works. Ice cubes don’t wipe out civilizations with bursts of gamma rays, though following the then-accepted rules of physics led inexorably to that conclusion.