How did the field of quantum mechanics come about in the first place? The Rayleigh-Jeans catastrophe, also known as the ultraviolet catastrophe was a prediction by the Rayleigh-Jeans law that a blackbody would radiate infinite amounts of ultraviolet light. It wasn’t until Max Planck came along and predicted that light came in packets or quanta that the field of quantum mechanics emerged and unintentionally solved the ultraviolet catastrophe.