Agence France-Presse reported that amidst the Russian-Ukrainian war and other crises, the Doomsday Clock, which represents the judgment of top scientists and security experts on the dangers to human existence, will update its hands on the 24th. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, headquartered in Chicago, will announce at 10:00 a.m. local time on the 24th (11:00 p.m. Taiwan time on the 24th) whether there will be any changes to the time indicated by the symbolic clock.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists described the Doomsday Clock as “a symbol of how close humanity is to self-destruction” and said the annual update of the hand’s position should be seen as a “call” to “take action to reverse the situation”.
Every year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ committee of science and safety experts and a sponsoring committee, including 11 Nobel Prize winners, decide whether to change the position of the Doomsday Clock’s hands.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists states that for 2023, war between Russia and Ukraine, biological threats, nuclear proliferation, the ongoing crisis of climate change, disinformation campaigns sponsored by governments, and destructive technologies will all be included in the adjustments to the Doomsday Clock. considerations.
Since January 2021, the hands of the Doomsday Clock have been at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight in history.
“The Doomsday Clock remains the closest thing to a civilization-destroying Armageddon as the world remains at a time of great peril,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in a statement last year.
When the Doomsday Clock was first launched, it was set at 7 minutes to midnight. The point at which the Doomsday Clock was farthest from destruction was 17 minutes before midnight in 1991, after the end of the Cold War.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by the scientists of the Manhattan Project, including Albert Einstein and J Robert Oppenheimer, who participated in the development of the world’s first batch of nuclear weapons. The Doomsday Clock was launched in 1947 to symbolize the global vulnerability to disaster.