Nobel prize winning scientists raise alarm on nuclear war threat
Thirty physics and chemistry Nobel laureates warn of escalating danger of nuclear war and call on world leaders to ensure nuclear weapons are never used.
Thirty Nobel prizewinners in physics and chemistry have warned that the spread of nuclear weapons combined with expiring arms control agreements threaten a dangerous new period in which nuclear war could devastate the world.
Gathered on the island of Mainau on Lake Constance in Germany, the laureates declared on Friday that “an accelerated arms race is underway” and “the situation is dire”.
Their declaration comes after repeated nuclear threats from Russian president Vladimir Putin during the Ukraine war and an accelerated push by Iran toward obtaining nuclear weapons.
Adding to the growing nuclear tension is the likely return of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in major power arsenals after the US pulled out of the intermediate-range forces treaty in 2019 and the expectation that the New START treaty limiting strategic nuclear weapons, which expires in 2026, will not be renewed.
The 30 laureates – including astrophysicist and former Australian National University vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt who won the physics Nobel prize in 2011 – individually signed the declaration on Mainau Island on Friday, wrapping up the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.
“We have been very lucky to have avoided nuclear war until now, but at this time the situation is dire,” the scientists said in the joint declaration.
“Nuclear arms are proliferating, arms control agreements are being scrapped and an accelerated arms race is underway.
“In today’s fragmented and polarised world, there is a significant probability that, either by accident or deliberate act, these horrible weapons may be used – with the likelihood of the end of human civilisation as we know it.
“We the undersigned scientists of different countries, different creeds, and different political persuasions, call on the people and leaders of the world to heed our warning and act to prevent this catastrophe.
“All nations must commit to ensuring that nuclear weapons never be used again. If they are not prepared to do this they will cease to exist.”
US scientist David Gross, who won the Nobel physics prize in 2004, said the laureates had decided to make the statement – to be known as the 2024 Mainau Declaration on Nuclear Weapons – because they believed there was “a significant probability that, either by accident or by deliberate act, these horrible weapons may be used”.
The declaration came at the end of the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, where Nobel winners in physics and chemistry gathered last week to meet and mentor over 600 young scientists from around the world, including at 11 from Australia.
The 2024 Mainau Declaration echoed a previous one made by Nobel Laureates at the 5th Lindau meeting in 1955 when 18 laureates, later joined by 34 more, signed a declaration warning of the immense danger posed by the development of nuclear weapons which were then a decade old.
The new declaration says that, since 1955, the number of countries with nuclear weapons, as well as the number of warheads and their destructive power, has increased ten-fold. The 1955 declaration was initiated by German physicist Werner Heisenberg who had worked on Hitler’s failed nuclear weapons program in World War II.
At the Lindau meeting in 2015, Nobel laureates signed a declaration on climate change, saying that it was threat comparable in magnitude to nuclear war and calling on the world to make rapid progress toward reducing greenhouse gases.
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