arXiv:2603.16902

Lord Kelvin's Second Cloud

Gilles Montambaux

physics.hist-phphysics.pop-phquant-phSubmitted Mar 4, 2026• Announced Mar 5, 2026

Abstract

On April 27, 1900, William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, delivered a visionary speech before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In it, he presented two unresolved problems which, to him, appeared fundamental and unavoidable at the turn of the 20th century. He compared them to two clouds obscuring our understanding of physics. Dissipating these two clouds would eventually require the development of special relativity and quantum mechanics. This article revisits the second cloud which, contrary to what is often claimed in the literature, did not concern black-body radiation, but rather the specific heat of polyatomic molecules. To clarify this, the article aims to place Kelvin's speech within the historical context of the time and to situate it within the sequence of developments, from Kirchhoff to the first Solvay Conference in 1911, that marked the path of the extraordinary intellectual adventure that led to the birth of quantum mechanics. It will also be shown that Max Planck's initial motivation was not to solve the problem of the so-called "ultraviolet catastrophe."

Comments: 10 pages, submitted to American Journal of Physics

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