The Doomsday Clock depicts how close humanity is to armageddon – but where did it come from, how do you read its time, and what can we learn from it? Existential risk researcher SJ Beard explains.

Each year for the past 78 years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published a new Doomsday Clock, suggesting just how close – or far – humanity is to destroying itself. The next ...

Martyl Langsdorf, an artist and wife of physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr. who worked on the Manhattan Project, designed the Doomsday Clock for the Bulletin’s first magazine cover in June 1947.