Doomsday Clock: Watch The Announcement Live Here At 15:00 GMT

Will we move closer, or further away?

At 15:00 GMT the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will unveil how close the Doomsday Clock is to midnight, or in other words global catastrophe.

Watch the announcement on Facebook Live above.

We will add a Facebook Live of the announcement at 15:00 GMT when the conference goes live.

Since the 40s leading scientists from around the world have used the Doomsday Clock as a wake up call to the world about growing threats or natural issues that are being ignored.

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The time as it stands is currently just three minutes to midnight, the closest that humanity has ever been to global disaster for decades.

Last year the group announced that the time would not shift any closer, or further away from midnight instead saying that it would keep a close eye on global events that would soon follow.

Those global events of course included the US election, one that saw Donald Trump become the 45th President of the United States.

In a statement announcing that they would unveil a new time, the scientists mentioned President Trump as a key deciding factor in its new decision.

“Factors influencing the 2017 deliberations regarding any adjustment that may be made to the Doomsday Clock include: a rise in strident nationalism worldwide, President Donald Trump’s comments on nuclear arms and climate issues prior to his inauguration on January 20th, a darkening global security landscape that is colored by increasingly sophisticated technology, and a growing disregard for scientific expertise.”

The History Of The Doomsday Clock

The Bulletin was founded by concerned US scientists involved in the Manhattan Project that developed the world’s first nuclear weapons during the Second World War.

In 1947 they established the Doomsday Clock to provide a simple way of demonstrating the danger to the Earth and humanity posed by nuclear war.

Today the Bulletin is an independent non-profit organisation run by some of the world’s most eminent scientists.

The Doomsday Clock now not only takes into account the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon but also other emerging threats such as climate change and advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Hulton Deutsch via Getty Images

The closest the clock has ever come to striking midnight was in 1953, when the time was set at two minutes to 12.

It was in that year that the US took the decision to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with the hydrogen bomb, “a weapon far more powerful than any atomic bomb”.

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