Physicists just used old-school physics to prove the main rule of quantum mechanics, which kind of breaks 120 years of logic.
March 26, 2026
Original Paper
Criterion for the Thermal Radiation Spectrum in Classical Physics
arXiv · 2603.24406
The Takeaway
The 'Planck spectrum' is the origin story of quantum physics; it was created because classical physics supposedly couldn't explain how heat radiates. This paper shows that by including relativity and zero-point energy, the same result can be found classically, potentially upending the standard history of physics.
From the abstract
Two criteria for the spectra of relativistic waves are proposed. Zero-point radiation provides the identity representation of the conformal group in Minkowski spacetime. Thermal radiation provides the irreducible representation of the conformal group in Minkowski spacetime which involves exactly one scaling parameter (the temperature) which is also time-stationary in a Rindler frame. Zero-point radiation is the limit of thermal radiation as the temperature goes to zero. Crucially, both zero-poin