The Doomsday Clock was just moved up by 30 seconds to 2 minutes and 30 seconds from midnight.The clock, a project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is meant to “warn the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies,” according to the Bulletin. The decision to move up the clock was made in part due to concerns about nuclear proliferation, and the impacts of climate change.
The clock was conceived in 1947 — when the United States and Soviet Union were in the early stages of the Cold War’s nuclear arms race. This is the closest to midnight the clock has been since 1953, when the Bulletin made the decision to advance the clock to 2 minutes from midnight in response to hydrogen-bomb weapons tests.