A reflective metaphor for the dangerous times in which we live

Scientists set Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever before

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — a nonprofit organization made up of scientists, former political leaders and security and technology experts — moved the hands of the symbolic clock 10 seconds forward, to 90 seconds to midnight.

Troubling

Doomsday Clock ticks one minute closer to midnight

The world tiptoed closer to the apocalypse on Tuesday as scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to the zero hour.

The symbolic clock now stands at five minutes to midnight, the scientists said, because of a collective failure to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, act on climate change, or find safe and sustainable sources of energy – as exemplified by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The rare bright points the scientists noted were the Arab spring and movement in Russia for greater democracy.

[PS Where history meets science in the brain--it's almost 3 am and I went to type the label and wrote 'Domesday' instead, like a good student of mediaeval history. :) Incidentally, the Domesday Book got its name from the idea that what the book said about material wealth--who held what, what taxes were owed at the time of Edward the Confessor--was final and could not be appealed, much like the concept of Last Judgement, or Doomsday.]

Some good news

Doomsday Clock set back by a minute

Humanity inched away from Armageddon on Thursday morning. The Doomsday Clock was set back one minute, from 11:55 to 11:54, reversing a precipitous slide toward midnight, the zero hour, ultimate self-destruction.

The clock was reset to reflect a "more hopeful state of world affairs," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced at the New York Academy of Sciences and over a live feed on the Internet. Forty policymakers, scientists and Nobel laureates on the board of the Bulletin -- an online magazine that covers threats to humanity -- decided to move the clock after spirited debates about current trends in science and politics.

"We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons," the board said in a statement. "For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable."

This is the 19th time the clock has moved in 63 years. The creators of the Manhattan Project wound up the symbolic device in 1947 to remind the world of the consequences of abusing nuclear power. Since then, the clock has moved forward 11 times and back eight times. It came closest to midnight in 1953, when the testing of hydrogen bombs nudged it to 11:58, and moved furthest away in 1991, when it slid to 11:43 after the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The clock has been steadily ticking toward midnight since the mid-'90s, as increased terrorism destabilized regions of the world and India and Pakistan tested nuclear bombs.

Of course, the Doomsday Clock just measures mankind's self-destructive likelihood from nuclear weapons. The article also points out that the prophecy site Rapture Ready's Rapture Index, which is a sort of barometer as to how close we are to the End Times, is at its highest point since the 9/11 attacks, having been last updated before the earthquake in Haiti, which will no doubt raise it further, serving to underscore the tribulations we are experiencing from a Christian standpoint.