Update of the Doomsday Clock: How Many Minutes Until Humanity Destroys Itself?
Update of the Doomsday Clock: How Many Minutes Until Humanity Destroys Itself?
The Doomsday Clock, created by the famous physicist Albert Einstein, has been updating for more than 75 years, which has determined the time of humanity’s self-destruction. While Russia’s war against Ukraine continues, time is not expected to turn back due to the climate disasters and economic crises that swept the world. Well, can you estimate the time it will take for humanity to disappear in a possible nuclear disaster? Here are the striking information about the Doomsday Clock, which has changed over the years…
An update is coming to the “Doomsday Clock,” which represents the judgments of leading science and security experts regarding the dangers of human existence.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that the symbolic clock will be updated on January 24 at 18:00 Turkish time. Scientists describe this watch as “a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-destruction.”
However, the decision to update the Doomsday Clock was taken by the science and security committee of the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences and a committee that included 11 Nobel laureates.
THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR WILL BE EFFECTIVE
For the year 2023, the Russian-Ukrainian war, biological threats, nuclear proliferation, the ongoing climate crisis, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and disruptive technologies will be taken into account, the researchers said.
UP TO 100 SECONDS TO THE END OF HUMANITY
However, the minute hands and hands of the Doomsday Clock are currently set to 100 seconds to midnight. Midnight indicates nuclear disaster. In other words, humanity can destroy itself in 100 seconds using all the nuclear weapons it currently has. Initially, the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.
The longest Doomsday probability ever recorded was 17 minutes after the end of the Cold War in 1991.
FOUNDED BY EINSTEIN AND FRIENDS
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other scientists working on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear weapons. In 1947, the idea of the Doomsday Clock was implemented, symbolizing global vulnerability to disaster.
The clock showed 7 minutes to midnight in 1947 and had changed 18 times by 2007.
It started to show 23:55 on 11 January 2012 by moving the clock forward 1 minute, by two minutes in 2015 and half a minute in 2017, to show 23:57:30.
The clock was set 1 minute and 40 seconds before midnight due to the end of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement between the US and Russia in 2020, the escalation of tensions between the US and Iran, and the failure of the war on climate change.
