Sun might get us before atomic bombs do

 

Slim Pickins rides a hydrogen bomb in "Dr. Strangelove"

      What is it with scientists and clocks? Yes, determining the duration of phenomena is important to research, not to forget seemingly unconnected realms like navigation — Britain ruled the waves for centuries, thanks to John Harrison’s clock, accurate time-keeping being the key to determining longitude.
     Clocks also serve science as metaphor — start with Albert Einstein, struggling to jibe the fixed speed of light with his aborning theory of relativity, looking at the medieval clock tower in Bern and realizing that time is not fixed, but elastic. He started sending notional clocks zipping at the speed of light in thought experiments, trying to nudge we dullards into comprehension.
     The practical value of Einstein’s 1905 musings was dramatically demonstrated at the University of Chicago in 1942, when the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear reaction was midwifed by Enrico Fermi.
     So it makes sense that another fine Hyde Park institution, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — founded in 1945 by Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and friends — would in 1947 use a clock as its logo, its hands set at seven minutes to midnight to convey the risk of nuclear Armageddon at the start of the Cold War. The editors took to moving the hands forward and back, warning the world how close to nuclear annihilation it was at the moment and — not incidentally, in my view — continuing the best marketing campaign for a publication other than Sports Illustrated featuring swimsuit models every February.
     That didn’t end so well for them — Sports Illustrated fired its entire staff Friday, effectively ceasing as a publication. But the Bulletin is going strong, and on Tuesday announced the clock would remain at 90 seconds to midnight, same as last year.
     “Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe,” is the doozy of an opening line in the Bulletin’s announcement.
     I paid particular attention this year since the University of Chicago’s International House is hosting “a conversation on the existential crises facing our planet and and how we can turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock” on Feb. 6, featuring Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Daniel Holz, a U of C Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics professor and chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board. They asked me to moderate the discussion.

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