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Free speech is the right to express one’s opinions without censorship or restraint. It is a cornerstone of modern liberal democracies. Nowadays, it is considered a basic right in the UN’s 1948 Declaration of Human Rights and it is is enshrined in British law.

This is not a bad dream version of recent climate change headlines. This is the dark vision in the 50-year-old dystopian novel, The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner. A British author, Brunner was one of a handful of writers who were early advocates of environmental activism.

Astronomers famously snapped the first ever direct image of a black hole in 2019, thanks to material glowing in its presence. But many black holes are actually near impossible to detect. Now another team using the Hubble Space Telescope seems to have finally found something nobody has seen before: a black hole which is completely invisible.

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has awarded OU space researchers close to £175,000 to develop a one of a kind construction method that could one day enable us to build on the Moon from lunar soil.

Research has shown that the Earth trails an asteroid barely a kilometre across in its orbit about the Sun – only the second such body to have ever been spotted.

The Open University (OU) is one of 10 organisations to be given a boost from UK Space Agency (UKSA) regional funding announced on Wednesday 2 February 2022.

An OU researcher is part of a team which has discovered 100-million-year-old fossil flowers preserved in fossil amber, more commonly known as tree resin.

It’s not often that the sudden appearance of a new impact crater on the Moon can be predicted, but it’s going to happen on March 4, when a derelict SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash into it.

An OU academic who led a research project to stop the spread of malaria is now co-leading one which will monitor the potential extent of flooding globally.

The fossilised remains of a gigantic ichthyosaur, colloquially known as a “sea dragon”, were recently uncovered at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in the UK.