‘Doomsday Clock’ Shows 90 Seconds To Midnight – What It Means For Scientists

It’s a minute and a half to midnight, and that means humanity has never been so close to a global cataclysmic event: the team of scientists managing the “Apocalypse Clocks”which does not measure time but the end of the world, warned today of the danger, citing it war in Ukraine and not only.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which since 1947 has undertaken this “symbolic” task, revealed at the press conference it granted Washington the new “hour” shown by the clock, which measures how close humanity is to a global catastrophe. The hands have advanced by 10 seconds and now there are just 90 seconds left before midnight, the hour that everyone wishes would never strike.

As of 2020, the clock showed 100 seconds before midnight. The indicators have now moved even further forward “closer to midnight than ever before,” the scientists said, citing “the intensifying risks of the war in Ukraine, but not only.”

After World War II the clock showed 7 minutes to midnight. In 1992, with the end of the Cold War, the clocks dropped to 17 minutes before midnight. In 1953, 2018 and 2019 they reached 2 minutes before midnight.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. Every year these experts “move” the hands of the clock, examining the situation prevailing in the world.