(Newswire.net — January 28, 2017) –Members of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who orchestrate the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic clock that’s ticking time approaching doomsday or the destruction of mankind, moved its minute hand from three to two and a half minutes before the final hour. It means that the Earth is getting closer to an imminent disaster.
They made such a decision after they reviewed the increase in threats to humanity.
Rachel Bronson, the executive director and publisher of the bulletin, said that during 2016, world leaders failed to establish control over “the most pressing existential threat to humanity: nuclear weapons and climate change”.
“We’re so concerned about the rhetoric, and the lack of respect for expertise, that we moved it 30 seconds,” she said. “Rather than create panic, we’re hoping that this drives action.”
Bronson was assisted by the theoretical physicist, Lawrence Krauss, the climate scientist and meteorologist, David Titley, and the former United States ambassador, Thomas Pickering.
The Bulletin posted a new article on its site, warning that “terrorism involving nuclear or radiological materials remains one of the gravest threats to humanity and to global stability”.
The clock was last moved in 2015, when the scientists moved it two minutes forward, but in 2016, scientists decided to move the clock closer to midnight because of a nuclear test in North Korea, the rise of tensions between India and Pakistan, and the worsening relations of Russia and the United States.
The countdown was established in 1947 by a group of experts who were working on the Manhattan Project to design and build the first atomic bomb. They wanted a simple way of demonstrating the danger posed by a nuclear war, both to the humanity and the Earth.
Experts started the clock in 1947 and each year since then, they estimated whether it is getting closer or further to doomsday and the apocalypse that will destroy our planet.
The clock is currently running at two and a half minutes to midnight, with midnight representing the end of humanity.