This Week in Science: Ancient Pizza, Drunk Hummingbirds, and a Real-Life Transformer

science

It’s time for “Nerd News,” covering the most important news for your brain.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week in science . . .

1. Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic had its first commercial flight to space yesterday. It’s a “space plane,” not a rocket. Three guys from Italy were on board, and got to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Around 800 people are on the waitlist to go. Tickets cost $450,000 a pop.

(Here’s the livestream. Its boosters fire at 38:33, and then the weightlessness starts around 41 minutes in.)

Stupid One-Liner: The first Virgin Galactic commercial spaceflight took place. It included military leaders, scientists, and like anything else on Earth, Ryan Seacrest.

2. In other space news: NASA locked four volunteers in a simulated Mars habitat in Houston on Sunday. Unless they tap out, they’ll be in there for just over a year.

3. In robot news: Caltech has a new shape-shifting robot that can walk, drive, and also fly. People are joking it’s like a real-life Transformer.

4. In food news: Archaeologists found a 2,000-year-old painting in Italy that might show an early version of pizza. It kind of looks like a personal pan, but they say it’s actually flatbread without cheese or sauce.

5. In much grosser food news: Researchers think they found the earliest evidence of cannibalism. They found bones of human ancestors with cut marks from 1.5 million years ago.

6. In health news: A fully A.I.-designed drug got approved to be tested on humans for the first time ever. It’s for a type of chronic lung disease. (Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis)

7. And finally, lots of animal news this week: New studies found dolphins use “baby talk” just like us . . . octopuses probably have dreams when they sleep . . . orangutans have their own form of beatboxing . . .

Hummingbirds drink an impressive amount of alcohol from fermented sugar in flowers and feeders . . . and a study found early human ancestors may have briefly lived alongside dinosaurs.