New Stephen Hawking children’s book to be published next year

You and the Universe, adapted from his posthumous 2020 Earth Day message, will bring the late physicist’s ‘extraordinary work to life for readers of all ages’

Lunar Codex: digitised works of 30,000 artists to be archived on moon

Collection to include images, objects, magazines, books, podcasts, movies and music from 157 countries

‘What if everybody decided not to have children?’ The philosopher questioning humanity’s future

Émile Torres has become a thorn in the side of the branch of moral philosophy that advocates prioritising our distant descendants. They explain the danger of utopian movements

Oppenheimer biographer supports US bill to bar use of AI in nuclear launches

Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, says technology is ‘too dangerous to gamble with’ and supports US senator’s attempt to bar it

Don’t fret, neurotics – there are advantages to worrying

Negative mental chatter and anxious fantasies may not be all bad – they could bring benefits such as greater creativity and better health

‘Not so alien’: biologist busts myths and explores enigma of the octopus

David Scheel’s study of mysterious creatures separates misconceptions from the often more extraordinary facts

Andrea Levy’s notes on Mary Seacole brought to light by IT experts

The writer’s scripts for a TV series about the nurse were among those recovered from her old computer by the British Library

Why a piece of ancient pot and a scrap of Virgil’s poetry speak to us down the ages

Perhaps we don’t need to know why someone inscribed a pot as it dried: it is enough to know they did it, says the Guardian’s chief culture writer, Charlotte Higgins

‘I wish I could be her hero’: the teenage sweethearts who face motor neurone disease together

When Justin and Rachel Yerbury met, they had no idea that he would become a world-leading scientist – studying a disease that would lead to his own tragic decline

Overwhelmed in London, I moved to Berlin to save my sanity – and savour a new life

Irish author Naoise Dolan on taking refuge in the German capital

Can humans ever understand how animals think?

The long read: A flood of new research is overturning old assumptions about what animal minds are and aren’t capable of – and changing how we think about our own species

What if nobody is bad at maths?

When I teach five-year-olds the subject they typically scream with excitement. Here’s how to stop maths-phobia setting in

‘The public wants certainty’: why have Americans stopped trusting in science?

In a new book, chemist Christopher Reddy tackles the problems faced by the scientific community during moments of major crisis

Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama review – pandemics and prejudice

The historian brings his considerable literary talents to this study of how blame, often mixed with antisemitism, has attended disease and vaccination through the ages

The big idea: why colour is in the eye of the beholder

We might think the sky is blue and trees are green, but the truth is rather stranger