For nearly 80 years, a global alarm clock has been ticking away. Its hands have been set and reset more than 25 times, sometimes backwards, but too often creeping forward to oblivion. How close is that clock to going off this year?
That’s the annual question posed by the keepers of the Doomsday Clock. It's not an actual clock, but it is an urgent warning to humanity — a metaphorical yet nevertheless ominous countdown to existential midnight, the end of the world as we know it.
Time on the Doomsday Clock
The current time is ... (Credit: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
For 2025, the Bulletin elected to set the clock even closer to doom.
