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With season 2 unfolding, the science of the fungal horror drama is becoming shakier. It is a pity that the creators haven’t thought about terrifying scenarios of real-life infection, says Corrado Nai

Following on from our first list, we asked New Scientist staff to pick even more of their favourite sci-fi books of all time. From Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin to Star Wars – the list has it all this time, we hope…

Very large hail – hailstones more than 5 centimetres in diameter – poses a growing threat to Europe as the climate warms, with increasing risk of expensive damage to cars and property

Kosmos 482, a Soviet spacecraft that never made it beyond Earth’s orbit on its way to Venus, is due to come crashing down on 9 or 10 May

Simulations suggest that an extraordinary jump in temperatures seen in 2023 and 2024 could simply be natural variability, rather than a new phase of climate change as some researchers have suggested

Groundwater extraction, plate tectonics and consequences of the last glacial period mean that most of the US's biggest cities are sinking

When huge scientific discoveries are made, you may hear that they are “statistically significant” or pass a threshold called “5 sigma” – but those calculations can be manipulated to make claims seem grander than they are, finds Jacob Aron

Cases of dementia doubled worldwide between 1990 and 2021, but more than quadrupled in China during the same period

Deep-sea submersibles have been diving for decades, but records show that we have still only explored a tiny area of the deep seabed, which makes up the majority of Earth's topography

A reader wonders if they can become less gullible. Our science-based advice columnist David Robson has some surprising answers

A disturbing new Danish TV series, which follows a wealthy family as rising seas force the evacuation of Denmark, is wildly popular in its home country. We should all be watching it, says Bethan Ackerley

Combining sustainability, climate resilience and environmental preservation, the ancient “milpa” system of the Maya revealed in these images has been practiced for millennia

The mathematician is out to show the close link between maths and the arts. This idea isn't new, and while Blueprints is lyrical on maths, it falls a bit flat when it comes to covering artists

In this latest instalment of our speculative column Future Chronicles, an imagined history of future inventions, Rowan Hooper explores the pros (and cons) of networking our brains with those of other animals

Feedback's proposal that the genome of the blue whale could be used to communicate the scale of large datasets is knocked back by a reader with a radical alternative suggestion

Rather than simply keeping children away from social media, we need a specially designed option for them. This is how it should look, says Michael Marshall

Kevin Tracey's authoritative look at the vagus nerve and its healing potential is comprehensive and compelling, cutting through the hype

We are often warned of the consequences of knowing too much, but even when scientific ideas have the potential to be harmful we should still seek to understand them

The average human brain contains around 7 grams of plastic, but it’s unclear how this affects us. Now animal studies are revealing links to poor cognition and weird behaviour

Superb starlings appear to swap between parent and ‘nanny’ roles to help raise chicks over their lifetimes, even when they aren’t related to them