We're in that interim period where people don't understand the technology at all but still think it's capable of anything, so even people who absolutely should know better are going to be misusing it.
More interesting to frame it the other way around really - why would some organisms reproduce using this dangerous, complex, uncertain process called sex
This isn't really exciting to read. I really appreciate the article handling this as strict information, it doesn't seem to have any loafed terms or forecasting in it. As you say, it is very accessible and probably the best way to digest this!
Thanks for sharing it. I am curious to see how this manifests.
How sure are they that his hasn't happened in the last billion years?
Maybe it happens once every 1,000 years but they've all died out before humans were able to observe it. It's not like things like this tend to leave much of a fossil.
And if you don't like 1,000, there's a few orders of magnitude to reconsider between there and 10^9.
It’s certainly possible that it is happening constantly, and we’ve only started looking for it recently. I’ve had a tinker with writing a better headline and it’s not easy. What would your short, pithy, accurate and unambiguous headline be - suitable for a non-technical audience?
And if "symbiosis" is too much, "combination". I also like "meld(ing)", but that might be somewhere in the middle.
I wouldn't use "hybrid" because that word has definitely made it into common vernacular and implies they've bred which isn't strictly accurate, and "chimera", while more accurate, is probably the more terrifying-sounding, if not still technical alternative.
"First evidence in a billion years of two lifeforms merging into one"
It's slightly shorter and more accurate.. it does not state absolutely that it happened for the first time, but rather that it's the first evidence we've found from the last billion years.
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