Doomsday Clock and Baby Results

If you're not familiar with the doomsday clock, it's a metric originated in 1945 by Albert Einstein and a group of Atomic scientists, all of whom were involved with the Manhattan Project. The group they formed, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially set the clock at 7 minutes to doom. Since that time, many Nobel laureates have been among its members.

Bi-annually, the group assesses, and where necessary adjusts, the doomsday clock, a metaphorical clock meant to alert humanity of its proximity to doom, primarily due to the threat of nuclear annihilation and other potential lethal bio-technologies.

In January 2023, the clock moved to 90 seconds to midnight, its closest to doom ever. Find out more at NPR.com

Keep in mind that while this is the doomsday clock's worst time, it's changed over 25 times. Throughout most of the 1950s, it was at 2 minutes to doom, just 30 seconds from where it is today. Things were up and down throughout the 1960s and 1970s, improving to 12 minutes to doom (1963, 1972) worsening to 3 minutes to doom in 1984.

In 1991, we were the furtherst from gloom, when the clock was set to 17 minutes from doom, after the US and Russia signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that same year.

Even though the clock's been mainly downhill since then, humanity does have a way of raising itself up when all looks lost. So there's every reason to believe that the clock can and will reverse course again!