The Doomsday Clock is updating again. It’s time for experts to predict if we’re closer to the end of the world. Between climate change, the Wuhan coronavirus, fires in Australia, and all sorts of other crazy things, some people are a little nervous about what the clock will predict.
On Thursday morning, January 23, at 10 a.m. Eastern (9 p.m. Central/7 a.m. Pacific or 3 p.m. in the UK/1500 GMT), the Doomsday Clock is going to give an all-new prediction for just how close our world is to midnight. If the video below doesn’t work for any reason, just watch live by going here.
The clock is one method of trying to determine just how close we are to the end of the world. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moves the clock forward or backward depending on what’s going on in the world at the time. In an FAQ, they explain: “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… After the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, Rabinowitch reset the clock from seven minutes to midnight to three minutes to midnight.”
In 2018, the clock was moved from two-and-half minutes to midnight to two minutes. This was the closest the clock had ever been to midnight since 1953, when it was moved to two minutes after the U.S. and Soviet Union each tested their first thermonuclear weapons. Before the latest prediction, the clock was at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight.
Anytime you want to know the Doomsday Clock’s current time, just visit the page here.
According to Bulletin.Org: “In 1991, with the end of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first treaty to provide for deep cuts to the two countries’ strategic nuclear weapons arsenals, prompting the Bulletin to set the clock hand to 17 minutes to midnight.”
Here’s a YouTube video explaining the clock from a couple years ago.
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