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This Week in Science: Philae Wakes Up, Coldest Molecules and a Pained Pompeiian Priapus

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(The Week of June 15, 2015)

Seven days, lots of science in the news. Here’s our roundup of some of the week’s most notable and quotable items:

The Philae lander woke up on a comet and reestablished contact with Earth after a nice seven-month nap.

To see better at night, the hawkmoth slows down its own brain.

MIT physicists created the coldest chemically stable molecules ever by cooling sodium potassium gas down to 500 nanokelvins, more than a million times colder than the void of space.

Korean researchers used graphene to create the world’s thinnest light bulb.

Methane was discovered on meteorites from Mars, lending credence to the idea of life on the Red Planet.

The oldest bald eagle in the U.S. (as far as we know) is dead at 38 after being struck by a car.

Observations of the unusually bright old galaxy CR7 may have yielded the first direct look at an early type of star that is thought to have existed before heavy elements like oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen were created.

In the Netherlands, engineers are going to try to 3-D print a steel bridge.

Male nightingales like to sing to potential mates about what good dads they’ll be.

A third of the world’s groundwater basins are being overdrawn.

The moon is surrounded by a permanent dust cloud.

Materials scientists built small devices that can generate electricity using humidity.

A famous 1st-century fresco portraying the Greek fertility god Priapus actually shows signs of a serious penile defect, physicians say.

Image: Sarah Peavey

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