The Doomsday Clock is accelerating and the world is getting closer to the apocalypse, according to scientists

The Apocalypse clock, which symbolically measures the end times, marked this Tuesday humanity has never been so close to a planetary cataclysm due to the war in Ukraine, nuclear tensions and the climate crisis.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, describing the clock as a “metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation”, moved the 100 second hand to 90 seconds at midnight.

Each year, the Bulletin’s science and safety committee and its supporters, including 11 Nobel laureates, make the decision to reposition the hands of this symbolic clock.

Until now, the closest they get to midnight, the fateful hour they hope never comes, has been 100 seconds. It was for two years from January 2020.

But things got worse. In a statement, the Bulletin said the needles are continuing this year “due in large part, but not exclusively, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the increased risk of nuclear escalation”.

Also weighing “the continuing threats posed by the climate crisis and the collapse of global norms and institutions necessary to mitigate the risks associated with the advancement of technologies and biological threats such as covid-19,” he added.

In its beginnings, in 1947, after the Second World War, it was seven minutes to midnight. The clock reached 17 minutes on doomsday after the end of the Cold War in 1991.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons.