HYDE PARK — The Doomsday Clock is set to three minutes to midnight and on Monday scientists will explain why they think the world is so close to calamity.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbol invented in 1947 by researchers with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago to represent the world’s proximity to global catastrophe.
The annual Clock Symposium will be held Monday from noon to 4:45 p.m. at the Eckhardt Research Center, 5640 S. Ellis Ave., and scientists will explain why the clock is set so close to midnight, a figurative doomsday.
Only three times before has the clock been set so close to midnight, most recently in 1984, when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union reached “their iciest point in decades,” according to the Bulletin.
The reasons for existential dread have expanded in 2015, but there remains the grim backdrop of atomic arsenals.
“Unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe,” the Bulletin says on its website.
The University of Chicago and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will hold a day of talks about climate change and nuclear security.
The event is free and open to the public.
To register and see a full list of speakers, visit the event website.
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