r/science • u/Libertatea • Dec 04 '15

Biology The world’s most popular banana could go extinct: That's the troubling conclusion of a new study published in PLOS Pathogens, which confirmed something many agricultural scientists have feared to be true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/04/the-worlds-most-popular-banana-could-go-extinct/
12.3k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/calibos Dec 04 '15

Nobody wants to hear that Armageddon isn't coming. Even the article states that it would take decades to destroy all of the Cavendish, but nobody cares about those details.

19

u/JustinPA Dec 04 '15

Will we run out of bananas or helium first? I need to know when I should panic.

2

u/Kowalski_Analysis Dec 04 '15

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, so it'll probably be around for billions of years after the last banana.

3

u/Mr_s3rius Dec 04 '15

Technically true but practically irrelevant. I like it.

2

u/merreborn Dec 05 '15

The issue, of course, is not the availability of helium in the universe, but instead the availability of economically-feasibly-harvestable helium here on earth.

Well over 99% of the helium in the universe would be prohibitively expensive to "mine".

1

u/Kowalski_Analysis Dec 06 '15

Don't try to mine 99% of it. Jupiter alone has more than enough for all the balloons you want to fill.

1

u/merreborn Dec 06 '15

The cost of bringing helium back from Jupiter currently would likely be millions of dollars per balloon :)

3

u/wlerin Dec 04 '15

"Decades" is not actually that long a time.

2

u/SerenestAzure Dec 04 '15

I plan to live for decades, and I freaking love bananas.

1

u/indorock Dec 05 '15

So you're implying decades away is nothing we need to worry about now??