CHICAGO, Dec. 17, Reuter: The keepers of a “Dooms day Clock” on Thursday moved its hands backward for the first time in 16 years, citing the recent Soviet American Summit as a step toward peace.
The hands of the clock, hanging in the offices of the magazine bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, were pushed back by three minutes to a new position of six minutes before the symbolic midnight hour representing nuclear holocaust.
The setting of the clock’s hands is determined by the magazine’s board of sponsors, 45 scientists of whom 16 are noble laureates. The original board included Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The new position is only one minute closer to midnight than the seven minute reading the clock showed when it was created in 1947 by scientists concerned about nuclear warfare.
But it was still only half the distance of the clock’s most peace full reading — 12 minutes — stein 1963 after the partial test ban treaty and again in 1972 after the antiballistic Missile and Salt I ‘Treaties.
“The INF treaty, combined with improvement in U.S.Soviet relations and greater international concern about common security matters, are significant first steps in a new direction”, the Journal said in an editorial in its January edition,
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty covering inter mediate range missiles during their summit earlier this month in Washington.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 25, 1987
