The Doomsday Clock, created 76 years ago by atomic scientists to warn against a human-made apocalypse, has moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the climate crisis, and biological threats such as the unchecked spread of COVID-19 were the leading reasons given by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), a non-profit organization of scientists and policy experts, for setting the hands of the clock closer to human extinction than they have ever been before — including at the height of the Cold War.
For the past three years the clock has been stuck at 100 seconds to midnight, hovering at what was until now the closest-ever point to humanity’s annihilation. Now, “largely, but not exclusively” due to growing risks in the war in Ukraine, it has ticked one step closer.
Related: ‘Nuclear winter’ from a US-Russia conflict would wipe out 63% of the world’s population
“We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday clock time reflects that reality. 90 seconds to midnight is the closest the clock has ever been set to midnight, and it’s a decision our experts do not take lightly,” Rachel Bronson, the president and CEO of BAS, said at a news conference on Tuesday (Jan. 24). “The US government, its NATO allies and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; we urge leaders to explore all of them to their fullest ability to turn back the clock.”
Created for the BAS in 1947 by Martyl Langsdorf (an artist whose husband, Alexander, helped to invent the atomic bomb as a physicist on the Manhattan Project), the Doomsday Clock was first envisioned as a means to plainly signal to the public the dire and growing existential threat posed by nuclear weapons to the world. In 2007, the clock’s countdown was expanded to include all human-made existential threats, burdening its hands with the additional representation of climate change, rogue artificial intelligence, war and global pandemics.
Founded in 1945 by physicists including Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, who was known as the “father of the atomic bomb”, the BAS’s formation was inspired by that year’s tragic dropping of the U.S. atomic bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Hiroshima alone, Little Boy killed…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Livescience…