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Five Minutes to Midnight
The University of Chicago publishes the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, a magazine
about topics related to
nuclear technology. On the cover of every issue
of the magazine, there is a picture of a clock. Since it
first appeared, the time on the clock has
ranged between 11:43
and 11:58.
The time it shows does not
indicate the time of day,
though. Instead, the time displayed
represents
how close we are to
midnight, a time
symbolizing the destruction
of mankind.
The idea for the clock
came about in 1947,
shortly after
atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan. Scientists had
seen the destructive power of these
weapons, and they
concluded that nuclear war would be a
catastrophe for the entire planet. They
created the doomsday clock to show how
close
humans had come to
destroying themselves. The first time it showed was
11:53. After that, the clock has been turned ahead or
back based on world events. In 1949,
when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb,
for example, the clock was turned ahead four
minutes, to 11:57. In 1953, with the US and USSR both
testing more destructive nuclear weapons within months
of each other, it was turned ahead another minute. The
clock has never been that close to midnight before or
since.
These days, the threat of
global nuclear war is much lower. However, scientists
have added
global warming and other factors like
nanotechnology to
their calculations of the time for the
doomsday clock. As a result,
the clock is currently
at 11:55, five minutes to midnight. Of the nineteen
times the doomsday clock has displayed over the years,
this one is the fifth-closest to 12:00. It is a silent
warning that global affairs are
currently heading towards destruction, and it
reminds us
to be careful in order to
keep time from running out. |
