What, exactly, is the Doomsday Clock — and why is it predicting that the end is near?

On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced the hands on the Doomsday Clock were moved forward to 100 seconds from midnight.

Midnight serves as a symbolic representation for the end of the world.

With words like “doomsday” and “apocalypse” permeating the internet, it’s no wonder the news has a lot of people asking not only what this means, but what the clock actually is.

Here’s a crash course on the mysterious Doomsday Clock:

What is the Doomsday Clock?

The Doomsday Clock was designed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to warn the public of how close civilization is to destroying the planet “with dangerous technologies of our own making,” according to the bulletin’s website.

The bulletin considers factors such as climate change, nuclear war and “cyber-enabled information warfare” as well as political responses to these threats to determine how vulnerable the world is to catastrophe.

These factors determine whether the Doomsday Clock’s hands are moved closer to or farther from midnight, a time that means the end of the world.

The bulletin says the hands were moved forward 20 seconds on Thursday due to two major threats: climate change and the possibility of nuclear war.

Who created the Doomsday Clock and when?

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group of University of Chicago scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to help develop the world’s first atomic weapons, according to the bulletin’s website. The bulletin was founded in 1945.

Each year, the bulletin’s Board of Sponsors and Science and Security Board decide whether to move the clock’s hands, according to the site. Currently, the Board of Sponsors includes 13 Nobel Laureates, most winning the prize in physics or chemistry.

When was it closest to midnight? Farthest away?

The clock’s hands were first set at seven minutes to midnight because Martyl Langsdorf, the clock’s artist, thought “it looked good to my eye,” the bulletin’s website says. The clock made its first move — to three minutes to midnight — in 1949 after the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb.

The Doomsday Clock was farthest from midnight — 17 minutes from midnight — in 1991, the bulletin says, citing the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the United States and Soviet Union, which resulted in cuts to the countries’ nuclear arsenals.

With Thursday’s change, the clock is the closest to midnight it’s ever been at 100 seconds. Before then, the clock’s hands were closest to midnight in 1953 and 2018 at two minutes to midnight.

Where is the Doomsday Clock?

If you want to visit the Doomsday Clock, look no further than the lobby of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ offices at Chicago University, 1307 E 60th St., Chicago, Illinois, the bulletin says.

This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 4:27 PM.