Atomic scientists have moved their Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever before, citing Russian nuclear threats amid the war in Ukraine, the military use of AI and climate change.<\/p>\n
It was reset on Wednesday to 89 seconds to midnight, making humanity one second closer to the theoretical point of annihilation than it was in 2024, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said.<\/p>\n
The Chicago-based non-profit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War II to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.<\/p>\n
“The factors shaping this year’s decision – nuclear risk, climate change, the potential misuse of advances in biological science and a variety of other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence – were not new in 2024. But we have seen insufficient progress in addressing the key challenges, and in many cases this is leading to increasingly negative and worrisome effects,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.<\/p>\n
“Setting the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight is a warning to all world leaders,” Holz added.<\/p>\n
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine launched Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n
“The war in Ukraine continues to loom as a large source of nuclear risk. That conflict could escalate to include nuclear weapons at any moment due to a rash decision or through accident and miscalculation,” Holz said.<\/p>\n
The doomsday clock is a symbol for humanity’s proximity to a global catastrophe.<\/p>\n
The clock is assessed in January every year by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board and its sponsors, which includes nine Nobel laureates.<\/p>\n
The doomsday clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making, according to the bulletin’s website.<\/p>\n
Midnight on the clock represents global catastrophe, with its minute and second hands denoting how close humanity is to that threat.<\/p>\n
The clock was designed by an artist and wife of physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr, Martyl.<\/p>\n
“It was a panicky time,” she told the Bulletin in 2007.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to believe today that the word ‘atom’ was alien.<\/p>\n
“The scientists, however, wanted to inform the public.”<\/p>\n
Dr Langsdorf Jr worked on the Manhattan Project, a top-secret World War II program involving hundreds of scientists and engineers that resulted in the development of the first atomic bomb.<\/p>\n
He worked alongside Albert Einstein and L. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped found the board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1945 with University of Chicago scientists.<\/p>\n
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists president Rachel Bronson said the clock was first developed by scientists concerned about their involvement in developing the atomic bomb.<\/p>\n
“In the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, [they] felt deep responsibility for the consequences of their own work and could foresee new dangers on the horizon,” Dr Bronson said.<\/p>\n
The clock was first set at seven minutes to midnight.<\/p>\n
“It seemed the right time on the page \u2026 it suited my eye,” she said.<\/p>\n
Following its inception, Manhattan Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch took over the setting of the clock.<\/p>\n
It remained unchanged in 1948.<\/p>\n
But Dr Rabinowitch moved it to just three minutes to midnight a year later when the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear weapon in a testing site in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
“The political disruption of the Atlantic community by the threat of Soviet atomic bombings may render the most expert and effective military planning of European defence illusory,” Dr Rabinowitch wrote in his explanatory note at the time.<\/p>\n
“This gloomy perspective must be analysed without passion or prejudice.”<\/p>\n
The Doomsday Clock was initially meant to track the threat of nuclear war, but has broadened in recent years to consider threats to global economies, politics, technology and climate change.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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