this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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36
Your morning coffee may be more than a half million years old (apnews.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

My coffee this morning was brewed fresh and was delicious, thankyouverymuch.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I thought it tasted funny.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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 :)

[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Interesting topic but pretty stupid headline.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I fell for the click bait.

How many species of anything are there that aren't 100's of thousands years old?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Tons of species of bacteria are merely years or decades old

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Technically correct

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Science shouldn’t operate on clickbait headlines like this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

half million years old

🙄

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's OK, I'm at least 100,000 years old according to this study.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

According to this *headline

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yep. My wording wasn't great. But what I meant was "according to how this study was described in the headline."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old."

Nope.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

That is what the news article says, yes. The article doesn't use any quotes around that line, so I assume it isn't from the original research paper.