timeline of the doomsday clock

The doomsday clock, Eugene Rabinowitch, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was the subject of my last hub. There we covered the way the Bulletin came about and how the clock was introduced into the scenario in 1947 in an attempt to pinpoint the destructive potential of a nuclear threat.

This time we will look at an expanded view of the timeline of the doomsday clock. 

The nuclear threats of the 1940's find their roots in the 1890's with the discovery of x-rays and of radioactivity by physicists like Wilhelm Roentgen and Antoine Henri Becquerel. Research into the atomic realm of nature brought about knowledge of atomic particles such as electrons and then alpha rays and beta rays. Later isotopes are added to the list.

Models of the atom are presented in science journals and by 1905 Albert Einstein publishes his E=mc² thesis. This he calls "the special theory of relativity" and it deals with the conversion of matter into energy.

In 1915 Einstein publishes a scientific paper on a more "general theory of relativity".

in 1919 Rutherford manages to produce the first artificially induced nuclear reaction by bombarding nitrogen gas with alpha particles.

Quantum mechanics enter the scene in 1925 through the works of Heisenberg, Born, and Schrodinger.

Still in the 1920's concepts like "high voltage proton linear accelerators" capable of producing "atomic transmutations" aka. nuclear reactions, and "atomic nuclei cyclotron" are mixed into the nuclear brew - haha.

The 1930's brings on deuterium, the neutron, nuclear fission and more.

In August of 1939 Einstein sends a letter to other atomic scientists and academics about the possibility of producing a weapon which uses uranium. This letter makes it's way to United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt in October of that year.

This brings us into the 1940's were many of the above mentioned names are or become contributing members to a newsletter on atomic energy. This is the newsletter which is later converted to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine.

In the 1940's heavy water plants start appearing. These will become very important to the production of nuclear weapons later on. Germany ceases the only existing one from Norway in 1940. The British meanwhile are working on a bomb research project of their own.

In 1941 the British research committee concludes that only 22 pounds of pure uranium 235 can produce a weapon. Meanwhile in America Roosevelt gives the go ahead for the Manhattan Engineering District. This black op program later becomes known as the Manhattan Project and one of it's members is Eugene Rabinowitch, founder of the Bulletin.

At the University of Chicago, in 1942 a sustained and controlled nuclear fission reaction is produced. This is a first for the world. A eureka moment in the world of invention.

In 1943 Los Alamos, Mexico becomes the new secret test site for the Manhattan Project.

In these years leading up to 1947 the newsletter is the method which the atomic scientists are using to try to gain some control, or perhaps it is better said to attempt to keep the control of atomic weaponry out of the control of the state. Of this Rabinowitch later notes that this was the failure stage of the Bulletin. It failed because after the US tested an atomic bomb in the Trinity test at Alamogordo in New Mexico in 1945 they went on to a practical application of the weapon in Hiroshima with Little Boy and then in Nagasake with Fat Man in the same year.

In 1946 Roosevelt has been replaced by Truman who signs the Atomic Energy Act. The intent of this Act is to keep these devices of mass destruction out of the hands of warlords or tyrrants and hopefully to keep them safeguarded for peaceful uses where nuclear reactions could be productive to humanity. But such technical products make the owner very powerful and the Soviets had a plan of their own.

OK so we get to 1947 and this is when we get our first glimpse at the doomsday clock as it appears as a symbol on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine.

The minute hand of the clock is set at 7 minutes to midnight at a time when the Brits are entering the nuclear age with their own reactors and their own atomic weapons.

Seven is a severe condition when the extinction of life is concerned but before the decade is up the minute hand is reset by the atomic scientist to read 3 minutes to midnight.

Why ? 

What would cause them to believe that humanity had moved closer to creating a great end time scenario through the use of weapons of mass destruction ?

The Soviet Union had come into the atomic war game with their own arsenal by 1949 and the arms race was officially on. The message was loud and clear for most of humanity that life could change in the blink of an eye - the apocalypse or a doomsday scenario which the world had never faced before in the history of humanity was a very real possibility by now.

Without using to many big words I hope that I have kept you interested enough to keep reading. If you are here then most likely I have. So far we have moved forward in time from the 1890's when atomic sciences really began to pick up momentum. People had thought about the world of the small for a long time prior to this but no real evidence could be used to quantify the reasoning that there is life in there. With no numbers or evidence to quantify matter then we have nothing more that mythological realms where dragons and sorcerers are conjured up.

The death of those people in Japan and the problems and ethical issues that atomic technology bring about are real science.

In the next part of this timeline of the Doomsday clock project I move forward through the years beyond 1950.

That link will be available below soon if it isn't already.

Thanks for reading