The Science Nerds Have Adjusted The Doomsday Clock Again Because Of The Threat Of 'Misinformation,' Seriously
If you're like me, you were today-years-old when you first heard about the Doomsday Clock, but it's a unique clock, that actually isn't a clock in any form or fashion, that gauges how close we humans are to destroying the world.
On Tuesday, the clock was moved from 90 seconds down to 89 seconds, which happens to be the closest the world has ever been to midnight (annihilation), according to a group of scientists who very clearly live their lives in an incredibly optimistic mindset.
The clock was established back in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Over the last 78 years, the clock sometimes gets adjusted, and sometimes it doesn't, it essentially just depends on how these big-brain scientists feel.
Maybe the most fascinating, yet not at all surprising, fact about the Doomsday Clock is that it's not a clock or even a tool that measures world-altering threats, but just an item to spark conversation.
In other words, it's a cardboard cutout any seventh grader could put together, but since it is backed by ‘science’ we're supposed to care about it.
As for why the one-tick movement on the ‘clock’ on Tuesday, it centers around the risk of nuclear war and, of course, climate change because we simply can not forget about global warming.
"We set the clock closer to midnight because we do not see sufficient, positive progress on the global challenges we face, including nuclear risk, climate change, biological threats and advances in disruptive technologies," Daniel Holz, a science and security board member said.
While nuclear war and climate change appear to be at the forefront of the clock adjustment, those in charge of moving the hand were sure to mention that "the spread of misinformation" was a "potent threat multiplier" in the case of humans destroying the planet.
It has to be a coincidence that the Doomsday Clock was adjusted in the name of misinformation just days after President Donald Trump re-took his seat in the Oval Office.
If you need just one example to show how non-serious the Doomsday Clock truly is, we just have to go back to 1947, when it was inaugurated.
The clock's inception centered around nuclear war after the United States detonated a pair of atomic bombs over Japan in August 1945.
With the clock being presented less than two years after two atomic bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of people, one would imagine it would be set rather close to midnight. Instead, the clock was sat at seven minutes to midnight in 1947.