This years’ time takes into account a number of considerations, explains the Bulletin, citing the multiple factors like cybersecurity, global warming to nuclear arming. The Doomsday Clock itself was established in 1947 and the decision to adjust (or leave) the clock is decided by a board of physicists and environmental scientists from around the world, advised by board of sponsors that includes 17 Nobel Prize winners. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is actually a journal founded in 1945 by the University of Chicago scientists who aided in the Manhattan project, following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the closest minutes to midnight occurred in 1953, when the Soviet Union detonated a hydrogen bomb following US testing of the same kind of bomb. This is the closest the time has come to “midnight”-the time symbolizing the end of civilization-since the 1980s. Some years the hand is readjusted in the opposite direction, such when the US and Russia conducted nuclear talks in 2010, but on Tuesday, January 26, 2016, scientists decided to maintain the clock’s current time of three minutes to midnight. This clock, headed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, metaphorically depicts just how vulnerable the world is to complete and utter annihilation by nuclear weapons, climate change, or other new technologies.Įach year world events are assessed and the clock’s minute hand is assigned a time based on the urgency of the danger levels. resides a “Doomsday Clock” that measures the likelihood of Armageddon. They state, "Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena in the past year, reflecting continued advancement of renewable energy technologies, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth.Somewhere in bowels of Washington D.C. Although we have made small advancements in this arena, the scientists at the Bulletin assert that we don't need small advancements. They continue by noting that global warming is one of the key threats to our world. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth." In the release, the scientists assert: "In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. Of course, the state of our nuclear weapons facilities are a factor as well. The Doomsday Clock was moved to just 3 minutes to midnight.
Today, in a press release, they stated that our unchecked interference with Earth's natural systems, and our irresponsible mismanagement of its resources, have left us in a rather bad position. Scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just announced that things are not looking too good for humanity or for planet Earth.