(ANSA) - NEW YORK, JAN 20 - While the past year offered glimmers of hope that humanity could reverse the march towards global catastrophe, the Doomsday Clock - the virtual clock with which scientists indicate how close the end is of the world, or the Day of Judgment - was aimed at just 100 seconds from midnight, that is the catastrophe.
Never so close, they point out.
The calculation is based on the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, disruptive technologies and covids. All of these factors have been exacerbated according to scientists by "a corrupted information ecosphere that undermines rational decision-making." "Nobody changes the world on their own. We won't all agree, but we have to work together. And together we will make it," said Hank Green, writer and science writer for the New York Times, who closed the broadcast on the ad.
The time of the Doomsday Clock - which turns 75 - is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board with the support of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates. For the past two years the clock has been set at 100 seconds at midnight, the closest to midnight in its history. "The decision - they explained - in no way suggests that the international security situation has stabilized. On the contrary, the Clock remains as close as ever to the apocalypse that puts an end to civilization because the world is stuck in a extremely dangerous moment ".
The Atomic Scientists Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Eugene Rabinowitch, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project.
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