Is humanity doomed? Doomsday Clock will be updated tomorrow to determine our fate
Is humanity doomed? We're about to find out – as scientists prepare to update the Doomsday Clock tomorrow.
The new time for the symbolic timepiece, which ticks closer to midnight as we approach annihilation, will be revealed at 15:00 GMT on 27 January.
Since last year, the clock has sat at 89 seconds to midnight – the latest time in its 78–year history.
However, ahead of tomorrow's grand reveal, experts have predicted the Doomsday Clock will move even closer to midnight.
A certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable.
Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now (1875)
11 comments:
They could ask a university to 'compute' this nonsense, but by then, we'd all be dead anyway...
Are we in the post-tell-the-truth era?
Humanity has always been doomed... but whether that will be because of nuclear war, evolutionary processes, climate change, or the death of the Sun is unknown.
Perhaps we will just collectively worry ourselves to death?
Scrobs - and even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
James - or even the post-know-the-truth era.
DJ - the worry question is interesting because the media push worry like crazy but large numbers of people don't appear to be worried. A survey on supposedly worrying issues might suggests otherwise, but media worry seems to be something we can put aside in favour of daily life.
By my calculation: a 12-hour clock that loses 1 second per 12 hours needs 59 years before it's right again. But I am old and tired so invite you all to check.
I can remember my mother reading the news that Russia had just exploded its first Atomic bomb and muttering about where are we all going to end up. The news has been wall to wall doom and gloom in all the years I have been around. There used to be a character I think was in the Tommy Handley radio programme "ITMA" who predicted doom all the time who ended by saying "Its being so cheerful as keeps me going ".
dearieme - I make it that too. Unusual clock though.
John - yes, doom grabs the attention in a way that optimism can't. Many of us know modern doom is mostly exaggerated or worse, but some people seem to thrive on it and won't be told about the exaggeration or even the lies.
But thank of the party every 59 years.
Western society will go extinct because those with above average i.q. have given up on breeding. For a few reasons, which include gender confusion, full time education and careers which gobble up the fertile years, and abortion.
The remainder will carry on until there is nobody left to fix all the magic stuff that previous generations designed, built and maintained. All data will be in the "cloud" and inaccessible because nobody can fix that magic stuff that communicates with the "cloud"', and nobody knows its post code.
All over the world soshul media devices will dim and expire and people will be lost with only face to face conversation to fall back on.
Wur doomed, Ah tell ye. Dooo-oomed!
Doonhamer - and many of those with average IQ go in for politics, tax-funded sinecures and NGO scams, keeping the decline firmly on track.
Dooomed - all dooomed!
I think science fiction books and films have been made with this theme.
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