• Question: What time is the doomsday clock on at the moment? Do you think it is right?

    Asked by davih158 to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 22 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi davih158. Quick check of Wikipedia says six minutes to midnight. Do I think it’s right? No way of knowing. The sort of science we work with deals in hypotheses that you can test. I come up with a model of how something works, then I think of the best possible experiment I can to test that hypothesis. The doomsday clock isn’t quite like that – more of a best guess trying to get some publicity. Unless you can think up an experiment to test the prediction? 😉

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi Davih158
      To be honest I’m not sure, but I think it’s a few minutes to midnight. This is not too good, but there’s no way that anyone can be really sure whether it’s right or not.

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      hello interesting question, thanks for it!
      Apparently the doomsday clock is at six minutes to midnight at the moment. to be honest though, i wasn’t aware of this really, and have just googled it! It’s an interesting idea, and recently it seems to of been moving away from midnight, which is a good sign. But to me to guess on how close the end of the world is, well it seems to open to opinion! It might of had a place during the cold war, but now i’m not so sure.
      Great Question though, on an interesting topic. Got me thinking late at night at least!

    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Wikipedia tells me the doomsday clock is currently at 6 minutes to midnight, but I’m afraid I don’t know the significance of this, or the accuracy of the clock…

    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 22 Mar 2011:

      Hi davih158,
      Apologies for taking so long to answer.

      The clock now reads six minutes to midnight. I don’t think it has ever gone below 11.45 so I don’t think we should be overly alarmed. It seems like a very strange way to present informaation on a whole load of diffent things, on the other hand it seems like a good way of drawing attention to problems.

      I don’t worry about the doomsday clock too much.

      Eoin

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