All posts tagged: Doomsday

Iran Had a Doomsday Weapon All Along

Iran Had a Doomsday Weapon All Along

Published by José Betancourt

President Trump has said that he went to war to stop Iran from ever having a nuclear bomb. Unfortunately, the war he launched led Iran to discover that it already had an extremely effective doomsday weapon—one that promised the economic equivalent of mutual assured destruction. The Strait of Hormuz has always been vulnerable; the United States has always known that Iran might try to close it if attacked. But neither Washington nor Tehran imagined how easy it would be for Iran to do so, how hard it would be for the U.S. to reopen it, or how widely and rapidly the economic effects of a closed strait would fan out. Fossil fuels are to modern industrial civilization what air is to the lungs: About 80 percent of the global economy is powered by oil, coal, and natural gas. Much of this comes from the states along the Persian Gulf: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. About 25 percent of global seaborne oil trade and 20 percent of global …

Jittery Futures Erase Gains Amid AI Doomsday Fears

Jittery Futures Erase Gains Amid AI Doomsday Fears

Published by Jenni Sidey

A short rebound in stocks fizzled after Monday’s drop, as worries about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence continued to unsettle markets which digested yesterday’s AI scare, and await today’s Claude / Anthropic presentation, while preparing for tonight’s State of the Union address (“SOTU”). Some have suggested that Trump may attack power generation risks during SOTU as he deals with affordability.As of 8:00am ET, S&P 500 futures traded unchanged, erasing an earlier 0.3% gain. The benchmark fell 1% in the previous session following a sharp drop in dealer gamma and a report that rehashes well-known fears about AI. Nasdaq 100 contracts climbed 0.1%, as AMD soared 11% on a $100 billion deal with Meta for data-center gear and a minority investment in the chipmaker. Other Mag7 are all mostly higher while an ETF tracking software firms was flat. IBM remained little changed following a 13% tumble. Nvidia Corp. fell 1.2% ahead of its results on Wednesday. Sentiment was also dented after Jamie Dimon said he’s starting to see parallels with the pre-financial crisis era, when a rush to make loans ended disastrously. At midnight, …

Disaster Strikes as Scientists Tunnel Into Core of Doomsday Glacier

Disaster Strikes as Scientists Tunnel Into Core of Doomsday Glacier

Published by José Betancourt

A scientific mission to study Antarctica’s rapidly melting Thwaites Glacier ended in heartbreak over the weekend, when researchers’ instruments became stranded somewhere within half-mile tract of glacial ice. According to the New York Times — which embedded with a team of researchers to install instruments beneath the infamous “Doomsday Glacier” — instruments meant to record data on the waters underneath Thwaites only made it about three-quarters of the way to their icy destination. To create a hole reaching the Antarctic waters, scientists and engineers blasted a borehole around one foot in diameter and about 3,300 feet deep using hot water. Unless the team kept applying hot water, they estimated it would re-freeze in just 48 hours. Their window of opportunity only lasted the weekend — if the scientists didn’t secure the instruments by Monday, an approaching front of bad weather would prevent helicopters from extracting them, effectively stranding them for an indeterminate period of time. Despite successfully dipping a set of pilot instruments into the drink before pulling them back out again, their main equipment …

The ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Could Flood the Earth. Can a 50-Mile Wall Stop It?

The ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Could Flood the Earth. Can a 50-Mile Wall Stop It?

Published by José Betancourt

This month, an international team of scientists has been trying to set up sensors on and around Thwaites Glacier, one of the most unstable in the world. It’s often called Antarctica’s “doomsday glacier” because, if it collapses, it would add two feet of sea-level rise to the world’s oceans. On Thwaites itself, part of the team will try today to drop a fiber-optic cable through a 3,200-foot borehole in the ice, near the glacier’s grounding line, where the ocean is eating away at it from below. Sometime in the next week, another part of the team, working from the South Korean icebreaker RV Araon, aims to drop another cable, which a robot will traverse once a day, down to a rocky moraine in the Amundsen Sea. The data the sensors gather over the next two years will fill gaps in basic scientific knowledge about Thawaites. They will also determine the future of an audacious idea to slow its demise. Right now, warm water is barely cresting the moraine, then flowing down a seabed canyon toward …

The Doomsday Clock Is Now 85 Seconds to Midnight. Here’s What That Means

The Doomsday Clock Is Now 85 Seconds to Midnight. Here’s What That Means

Published by skeptic

The Doomsday Clock has just been set to 85 seconds to midnight. Nearly 80 years after its creation, this time represents the closest the clock has ever been to midnight. This was reported by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SABS), the expert council that annually updates the clock’s hands. This year, the group highlighted the growing threat of nuclear weapons, disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, multiple concerns about biosecurity, and the persistent climate crisis . The Doomsday Clock The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947, during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is, in essence, a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to the destruction of the world, with midnight symbolizing the moment when humanity will have rendered the Earth uninhabitable. Last year, the hands were moved to 89 seconds to midnight, from the 90 seconds set in 2023 and 2024, due to insufficient progress in addressing or regulating global challenges like nuclear risk, the climate crisis, biological threats, disruptive technologies, and …

2026 Doomsday Clock Hits An All-Time Record

2026 Doomsday Clock Hits An All-Time Record

Published by Sam Flores

The Doomsday clock has moved closer to midnight, jumping from 89 seconds to midnight in 2025 to 85 seconds this year (2026). “Midnight” on the Doomsday clock symbolises global catastrophe. This is the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1947, when the clock was first introduced. Why has the Doomsday clock time changed? According to members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who decide the time on the clock, it’s down to a number of factors. “The risks we face from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies are all growing,” Alexandra Bell, the president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said. “Every second counts, and we are running out of time”. Other threats mentioned included risks of nuclear war and the unmanaged adoption of AI, as well as the climate crisis. Daniel Holz, chair of the group’s science and security board, added that global relations and international trust is being eroded. “Major countries became even more aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” he said. This matters, he said, because “if …

Doomsday Clock now closest to midnight ever

Doomsday Clock now closest to midnight ever

Published by skeptic

The Doomsday Clock is now the closest it has ever been to midnight. Scientists have set the symbolic Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, issuing a dire warning about the apocalyptic danger of nuclear weapons, biological threats, climate change, and AI. SEE ALSO: How to advocate for climate change action Announcing the Doomsday Clock’s new time on Tuesday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists stated that powerful countries such as the U.S. have not only failed to act since last year’s warning, but actively worsened the situation. The Doomsday Clock was set to 89 seconds to midnight in January 2025, the closest it had ever been at the time. This week’s announcement now moves it four seconds even closer to disaster. “Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” read the Bulletin’s statement, written by editor John Mecklin. “Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse …

Four threats pushing us to disaster, say Doomsday Clock scientists | World | News

Four threats pushing us to disaster, say Doomsday Clock scientists | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

The Doomsday Clock acts as a symbolic indicator of how close scientists believe humanity is to a catastrophic global disaster (Image: Getty Images/Stocktrek Images) Following the Doomsday Clock being set closer to midnight than ever before in its history on 26th January, the panel of experts behind the predictions outlined four significant reasons for the shift. The Doomsday Clock acts as a symbolic indicator of how close scientists believe humanity is to a catastrophic global disaster. An international group of specialists regularly adjusts the clock, assessing planetary threats and moving the hands annually to reflect our position as a planet. This year, they identified four major factors pushing the clock several seconds nearer to “midnight,” or doomsday: emerging sciences such as synthetic mirror life, accelerating AI development, climate change, and possible nuclear proliferation. Rather than operating as an actual countdown, it serves to highlight the escalating threats facing humanity, with midnight representing the point at which civilisation would face irreversible damage. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a non-profit organisation made up of scientists, …

The Doomsday Clock Jumps Closer to Midnight. AI Is a Big Reason Why

The Doomsday Clock Jumps Closer to Midnight. AI Is a Big Reason Why

Published by skeptic

There is no shortage of explanations for why the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its metaphorical “Doomsday Clock” up by a whopping 4 seconds Tuesday, to 85 seconds to midnight. For instance, world leaders are openly talking about testing and using nuclear weapons, and the US is taking the threat of fossil-fuel-driven climate change even less seriously than it did last year.  But underlying all of the existential threats we’ve created for ourselves is a lack of cooperation, made far worse by AI’s acceleration of deepfakes and the erosion of trust in information systems.  CNET “AI is a significant and accelerating disruptive technology,” Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board that sets the Doomsday Clock and a professor of physics at the University of Chicago, said during the announcement. “AI is also supercharging mis- and disinformation, which makes it even more difficult to address all of the other threats we consider. But instead of working toward international standards governing AI safety, we are running headlong into an AI arms race with …