The Doomsday clock has kept track of the likelihood of humanity’s annihilation since it 1947 and on Thursday, a panel of scientists will again unveil it for the 75th time to determine our fate.
The clock’s hand has remained at 100 seconds to midnight for the past two year, but with war looming between Russia and Ukraine, climate disasters worldwide, conflict in space and coronavirus cases spike around the globe it is hard to imagine the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists turning back time.
The closet the clock has come to hitting midnight was two minutes before at the height of the Cold War in 1953 and the farthest was when it moved 17 minutes before midnight at the end of the same war.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists plan to host a livestream of the event at 10:00am EST (1500 GMT) tomorrow, January 20.
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The Doomsday clock has kept track of the likelihood of humanity’s annihilation since it 1947 and on Thursday, a panel of scientists will again unveil it for the 75th time to determine our fate
‘For 75 years, the Doomsday Clock has acted as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation,’ reads the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ website.
‘Since 1947, it has also served as a call-to-action to reverse the hands, which have moved backwards before.’
The clock was founded by US scientists involved in the Manhattan Project that led to the first nuclear weapons during World War II and is a symbolic countdown to represent how close humanity is to complete global catastrophe.
Artist Martyl Langsdorf was commissioned to make the clock and told to to create an image that would ‘frighten men into rationality,’ according to Eugene Rabinowitch, the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
The clock’s hand has remained at 100 seconds to midnight for the past two year, but with war looming between Russia and Ukraine (pictured) some are sure the hand will not move away from midnight
The Doomsday clock first moved to 100 seconds to midnight in January 2020, and remained there in 2021 – in part due to a ‘lack of action’ over the COVID-19 pandemic
Langsdorf developed a stripped-down clock to reflect urgency and only hours in the last quarter before midnight are shown on the face.
It was also her decision to put the minute hand at seven minutes before midnight, which was just meant to be a visual.
And it was Rabinowitch who moved the hand to three minutes to in 1949.
Since then, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has annually announced if the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand has moved closer to or away from midnight, which marks disaster.
The clock was founded by US scientists involved in the Manhattan Project that led to the first nuclear weapons during World War II and is a symbolic countdown to represent how close humanity is to complete global catastrophe. Pictured is the first unveiling in 1947
The time is determined by the group of scientists who look at events throughout the year.
This can include politics, energy, weapons, diplomacy and climate science, along with potential sources of threat like nuclear threats, climate change, bioterrorism and artificial intelligence.
And It has been set backward and forward 24 times since 1947.
The Doomsday clock first moved to 100 seconds to midnight in January 2020, and remained there in 2021 – in part due to a ‘lack of action’ over the COVID-19 pandemic.
And tomorrow, we will again learn the fate of humanity.
