What is the Doomsday Clock and what happens when it reaches midnight
The Doomsday Clock has been moved closer to midnight in a worrying development. Experts yesterday shifted the dial to 89 seconds to midnight, due to a lack of progress on global issues such as the threat of nuclear war, climate change, and biological threat.
In 2023 and 2024 the clock sat at 90 seconds to midnight, and yesterday, January 28, was the first time it has moved in three years. Scientists earlier said that the reason it is so close was due to the outbreak of war in Ukraine and new nuclear arms, reported the Mirror.
But what exactly is the Doomsday Clock and what happens when it finally reaches midnight? Here's everything you need to know about this apocalyptic countdown.
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Who invented the Doomsday Clock?
The clock was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), which was founded two years prior. Scientists Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and Eugene Rabinowitch founded the Bulletin along with University of Chicago scholars in 1945.
The Bulletin still has authority to move the clock closer to midnight depending on the current state of affairs. Former Colombian president and Bulletin member, Juan Manuel Santos, said: "The clock is a stark diagnosis of our reality - we stand closer to human catastrophe than ever before.
"2024 was the hottest year on record, destroying lives across the globe. The only effective response is for nations to come together. This is why it's alarming that President Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement."
America's withdrawal form the World Health Organisation is "another worrisome decision that will have a huge ramifications for the global health security", the former president said.
What does the Doomsday Clock do?
The Doomsday Clock gives a visual to how close we are to man-made global destruction. Factors like climate change, conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and looming nuclear war have all been edging the clock closer to midnight in recent years.
This visual shows how close we are to “destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making”, according to BAS. The Chicago-based non-profit organisation says the clock is “many things all at once: It’s a metaphor, it’s a logo, it’s a brand, and it’s one of the most recognisable symbols in the past 100 years.”
It is hoped that the clock will make world leaders realise that their actions are sending us towards a point of no return (midnight), and that action must be taken to reverse the clock's hands.
What happens when it reaches midnight?
Midnight on the Doomsday Clock signifies that our time is up and that humanity's actions have triggered the end of days. After the clock was moved a second closer to the end yesterday, it is now at the closest to midnight it has ever been since its creation at the end of World War Two.
Until recently, the closest the hands had ever been was two minutes to midnight. This occurred in 1953 when the US and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear weapons, and again in 2018 because of “a breakdown in the international order, of nuclear actors, as well as the continuing lack of action on climate change”.
Since then, the clock has been ticking further towards the apocalypse.
Can the clock be turned back?
Luckily for all of us, it is possible for the clock to turn back, and it wouldn't be the first time. In 1991, US President George HW Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce the number of their countries’ nuclear weapons, bringing the clock back by seven seconds.
This was the furthest the clock has been from midnight, at 17 minutes. And the Bulletin seems to agree that, while we now have less than two minutes to go, we've not reached midnight yet.
Robert Rosner, former chair of the Bulletin’s science and security board, commented: "Past experience has taught us, even during the most dismal periods of the Cold War, we can as a people come together to address our challenges. It is now high time to do so again.”
While we may be close, we're not at the end of days just yet.
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