Jakarta –
The Doomsday Clock is reset at the beginning of every year. Scientists who are members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) will provide ‘predictions’ regarding the fate of the Earth.
The reset will usually take place in January, and will be broadcast live on the BAS website, or on their Facebook and YouTube pages. They will announce whether the time on the iconic Doomsday Clock has changed or not.
What is the Doomsday Clock
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock that represents the possible risk of a man-made global catastrophe. This symbol has been maintained since 1947 by BAS member scientists at the University of Chicago, United States (US).
Meanwhile, BAS is an organization consisting of experts and scientists whose task is to assess scientific progress and its risks to humans.
BAS was founded by a group of atomic scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project’s nuclear bomb tests. The name was taken from the code for the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
Initially, the Doomsday Clock was created to measure the risk of nuclear threats. The time on the clock has changed according to how close scientists believe humanity is to total annihilation.
BAS admits that the watch is not designed to measure concrete threats of Earth’s destruction. However, its existence can be used as a trigger for conversations about complicated scientific topics such as climate change.
How to Read the Doomsday Clock
The closer the clock gets to 12.00 midnight, the closer humans are to the destruction of the Earth, according to scientists’ calculations.
Of course, this does not mean that it is real time for the end of the world, but rather that this clock is a symbol of the potential destruction of the Earth due to the large amount of damage.
Quoted from the BBC, this hour is not intended to tell us how big a risk humanity is facing, but how well we are responding to that risk.
First set in 1947, the clock is stated to be 7 minutes to midnight. However, the increasing destruction of the Earth due to many things ranging from nuclear danger, disinformation, to climate change, the needle is getting closer to midnight.
According to existing records, the longest distance between the Doomsday Clock was 17 minutes to midnight when it was reset in 1991.
This happened when the President of the United States (US) George Bush and the President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev announced a reduction in their respective countries’ nuclear arsenals.
War, nuclear tests, climate change, and the impact of pandemics are some of the things that scientists are considering. These problems were not created by individual global crises, but are systemic, and this is what the Doomsday Clock is trying to measure. From there, scientists will then determine how many minutes or even seconds the Doomsday Clock is until midnight.
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(rns/afr)
2024-01-09 00:48:35
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