Doomsday Clock Stands Still in 2013

Scientists have announced that the two hands of the Doomsday Clock will not move this year, implying that the threats to the earth are neither increasing nor decreasing.

The Doomsday Clock's hands will still be five minutes from midnight in 2013. Photo: slashgear.com.

The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock created in 1947 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) at the University of Chicago in the United States, to provide a warning level of nuclear war on a global scale.

The greater the nuclear threat, the closer the clock gets to midnight. Today, the Doomsday Clock is used to warn of the threat to the world from all sorts of threats that could threaten humanity, such as climate change or nanotechnology weapons.

BAS has announced that it will keep the Doomsday Clock unchanged, not moving it closer or further away from the danger point, after reviewing the state of the world's nuclear arsenals, the Fukushima nuclear crisis and extreme weather events caused by climate change.

On 14 January 2010, the hands of the Doomsday Clock were moved back one minute to six minutes to midnight. BAS moved the clock back because it believed world leaders were working to address the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other global threats.

But on January 10, 2012, the hands of the Doomsday Clock moved one minute closer to midnight due to climate change and the failure of the international community to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. With the latest decision by the BAS, the hands of the Doomsday Clock will remain five minutes from midnight.

According to VnExpress - VT