That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old.
Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.”
The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species.
“In other words, prior to any intervention from man,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study.
Tons of species of bacteria are merely years or decades old
"That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old."
Nope.
Exactly. Science reporting is pretty awful, but in many cases the scientists enable that.
The point of my other facetious comment is that this is not how anyone, scientists included, would define the age of a particular person's coffee. Your coffee was grown and harvested recently. The species can be dated back a half million years. Conflating the plants and the species is misleading at best.
What the actual fuck... and that too from apnews?
Now only if those "researchers" looked even further back, they would have found that ultimate building blocks of any coffee, like electrons and up & down quarks came into existence around 13.8 billion year ago (or may be ~28 billion year ago as claimed by some new research), and our universe may be a part of infinite multiverse that may have existed forever.
So wouldn't it be even bigger headline that coffee has existed forever :)
I thought it tasted funny.
half million years old
🙄
My coffee this morning was brewed fresh and was delicious, thankyouverymuch.
@lemmy.world
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
go to feed...
Interesting topic but pretty stupid headline.
save