TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The hands of the iconic “Doomsday Clock” may once again be on the move.
According to an announcement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group responsible for measuring humanity’s threat of self-annihilation, the clock may resume its move closer to midnight for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Currently, the clock stands at 100 seconds to midnight when it was set there in 2020 after world leaders allowed the international political infrastructure to “further erode.”
The clock serves as a metaphor and visual representation of how close humanity is to self-annihilation. It also serves as a call to action to reverse the hands, which have been moved backward before.
The last time the clock ticked in reverse was in 2006, when the clock’s arms were moved from five minutes to midnight to six minutes. At the time, the group cited positive developments in the handling of nuclear weapons and goals set by industrialized and developing nations to limit their climate-changing gas emissions.
For 2023, scientists will consider the Russia-Ukraine war, bio-threats, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continued climate crisis, and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and disruptive technologies as factors in the clock’s hand movements.
The group is expected to announce whether the time of the Doomsday Clock will change on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. ET.
According to NBC News, the group was founded in 1945 as a nonprofit organization that examines global security issues related to science and technology.
Each year, the group consults with a board of sponsors to analyze the world’s most pressing threats in order to determine where the clock’s hands should be set.
The Doomsday Clock has been moved 24 times since its creation.
