The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic timepiece showing how close the world is to ending. Atomic scientists reset the Doomsday Clock every January. Midnight marks the theoretical point of annihilation. Apocalyptic threats could arise from political tensions, weapons, technology, climate change or pandemic illness. The clock's hands are moved closer to or further away from midnight based on the scientists' reading of existential threats. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists updates the time annually based on information about catastrophic risks to the planet and humanity. At 90 seconds to midnight, the Doomsday Clock is the closest it has ever been to midnight. The clock was first set at 90 seconds to midnight in 2023 to reflect the danger posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Just how close is humanity to destroying itself? We'll know Tuesday morning, when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announces the new setting of its 78-year-old Doomsday Clock.
The product of hundreds of hours of research, discussion and debate by an international group of eminent scientists and Nobel Laureates, the setting is meant as a metaphor for just how close we've come to the brink of self-destruction.
For the past two years the setting has been 90 seconds to midnight, with midnight meaning the theoretical annihilation of humanity, by design or by mistake.
The next edition of the Clock will be revealed Tuesday at 10 a.m. EST on a live webcast. Until that moment it is a a closely held secret, known only two dozen or so scientists who chose it and a few staffers.
What is the Doomsday Clock?
Originally, the ominous clock measured the danger of nuclear disaster. In the past two decades, three other areas of concern have been added: climate change, artificial Intelligence and mis- and disinformation.
Each year, the members of the Science and Security Board are asked two questions:
Their answers set the clock for the coming year.
The clock is meant as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has maintained it since 1947.
How did the Doomsday Clock start?
In 1945, on the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, which built the world's first atomic bombs, began publishing a mimeographed newsletter called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Two years later, as those same scientists contemplated a world in which two atomic weapons had been used in Japan, they gathered to discuss the threat to humanity posed by nuclear war.
"They were worried the public wasn't really aware of how close we were to the end of life as we knew it," said Rachel Bronson, current president and CEO of the Bulletin.
Martyl Langsdorf, an artist and wife of Manhattan Project physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., came up with the idea of a clock showing just how close things were.
They called it the Doomsday Clock.
"It gave the sense that if we did nothing, it would tick on toward midnight and we could experience the apocalypse," Bronson said.
What does midnight represent on the Doomsday Clock?
The clock only looks at things humanity could do to itself. A meteor hurtling towards earth wouldn't count, while tinkering with viruses to make them more dangerous would.
From the 1950s through the 1980s the threat of nuclear war felt imminent. Though it feels less real now, the risk hasn't gone away, said Robert Socolow, a environmental scientist, theoretical physicist, and professor emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University who is on the board.
"The nuclear threat is one that young people can't believe their grandparents and parents lived with but now their working assumption is 'I don't need to worry about it.' But they do," he said.
Today's dangers are somewhat different, than they were when the threat was mainly from the Soviet Union, because we have non-state actors such as terrorists, and countries like North Korea that are not part of the global order, who might have access to dangerous weapons and pathogens.
Where does the nuclear threat stand?
The original Doomsday Clock was all about the threat of nuclear annihilation. Little more than a week into President Donald Trump's second term in office, the nuclear outlook is still unclear.
The world's last remaining nuclear arms control pact - New START, which limits U.S. and Russian nuclear warhead deployments (and not stockpile size) - expires in early 2026.
The U.S. commander-in-chief told World Economic Forum attendees Thursday that he would "like to see denuclearization" and said he previously discussed the idea with the leadership of Russia and China.
Yet the president's appointees, including new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are less bullish about future arms reductions. The Pentagon head, in written responses to lawmakers' policy questions before his confirmation, said the country should only "pursue arms control when it is in its interest to do so ... Both China and Russian have rebuffed US efforts to engage in meaningful risk reduction talks since 2020."