When the count began, the clock was seven minutes to midnight (Photo: Pixabay/Reproduction) The important group of nuclear scientists Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced this Tuesday (01/24) that the end of the world is closer than ever . The group created a mechanism to warn the planet of the risks of a possible apocalypse: the “doomsday clock” or the doomsday clock in loose translation.
The logic of the clock: The closer the hands of the clock are to midnight, the closer the end of the world is. This year, the group of scientists announced that we are 90 seconds from the end of the world, the closest the doomsday clock has hit midnight against Ukraine since its inception in 1947.
How the doomsday clock works
The clock is considered a good marketing idea to stimulate discussion about catastrophic events, but it’s not an accurate measure of how much time is left on the planet. Despite the simple explanation, the position of the clock hands is determined by a series of complex mathematical calculations that measure the true likelihood of events occurring.
These include nuclear wars, epidemics and climate change. The watch was created shortly after World War II when scientists, including physicist Albert Einstein, began to worry about the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
When the count began, the clock was seven minutes to midnight. In 1953, amid nuclear tensions, the clock reached two minutes before the end of the world.
With the end of the Cold War, it went back to 17 minutes. At the beginning of this century with the advance of climate change and the nuclear threat in North Korea, he again scored two minutes. In 2021 and 2022, due to the Covid19 pandemic and the risks of a new arms race, the clock reached 100 seconds to midnight.