It’s now 5 minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, which is maintained by the Board of Directors of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. The clock, which was created in 1947 as a tangible means of communicating how close humanity is to being annihilated, with midnight representing total destruction by nuclear war. The last time the clock moved was in 2002, thanks to the hawkish turn the American government took, stalling disarmament and backing out of the Anti-Ballistic missile Treaty, effectively granting permission to the rest of the world to being stockpiling arms. Thanks be to the United States’ horrid leadership over the past 5 years, the board decided to advance the clock by 2 minutes, citing concerns over Iran and North Korea’s nuclear weapon intentions and the rapidly decreasing environmental stability thanks to global warming. In honor of, sit back and enjoy R.E.M.’s epic track, dedicated to just this topic…

Read the Board’s statement after the jump..

Read more of ”Doomsday Clock hits 5 minutes to midnight, sales of R.E.M’s “Document” up“

In a new paper published on Sunday and delivered at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society a scientist is stating his theory that two NASA space probes (Vikings) may have found alien microbes on Mars 30 years ago but inadvertently killed them. The theory presented is that Voyager was looking for life forms specific to Earth-life, where salt water is the internal liquid of living cells, rather than hydrogen peroxide, a liquid which could more realistically survive the cold and dry climate of Mars. As the Viking probes performed their experiments on the Mars surface any hydrogen peroxide-based life would have been killed by experiments consisting of water poured onto the planet surface and another which heated the soil to see if something would occur, essentially baking and Martian microbes.

Read more: Scientist: NASA found life on Mars — then killed it