Mark Thompson

Science broadcaster and author. Mark is known for his tireless enthusiasm for making science accessible, through numerous tv, radio, podcast and theatre appearances, and books. He was a part of the aware-nominated BBC Stargazing LIVE TV Show in the UK and his Spectacular Science theatre show has received 5 star reviews across UK theatres. In 2025 he is launching his new pocast Cosmic Commerce and is working on a new book 101 Facts You Didn't Know About Deep Space In 2018, Mark received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of East Anglia.

You can email Mark here

Recent Articles

Ancient Moon Rock Reveals Missing Chapter in Lunar History

July 11, 2025

A 2.35 billion year old rock that fell from the sky in Africa is rewriting our understanding of the Moon's past. This ancient meteorite, blasted off the lunar surface has revealed that our closest neighbor remained volcanically active for nearly a billion years longer than scientists previously knew. With its unique chemical fingerprint pointing to deep lunar origins, this rare space rock proves that sometimes the most extraordinary discoveries don't require billion dollar missions, they literally drop into our laps, carrying secrets from space.
A Small Satellite Could See a Perfect Solar Eclipse Every Month

July 11, 2025

Why wait for rare solar eclipses? ESA's Proba mission can now create an artificial solar eclipse once a day. Now, a UK-led mission could do the same trick, but using the Moon's shadow to provide a 48-minute total eclipse once every lunar orbit (29.6 days). Named the Moon-Enabled Sun Occultation Mission (MESOM), the small spacecraft would align its orbit with the Moon, blocking the Sun perfectly, allowing observations of the solar atmosphere.
UK is Considering a Mission to Venus to Search for Life

July 10, 2025

Is there life on Venus? The controversial detection of phosphine and ammonia hints that bacterial life could be surviving in the planet's milder upper atmosphere. But to confirm its existence, we'll need to measure the atmosphere directly. A new mission concept was recently unveiled called the Venus Explorer for Reduced Vapours in the Environment (VERVE). It's a CubeSat that could fly with ESA's EnVision mission in 2031, studying the atmosphere for more evidence of active biology.
Lunar Astronauts Could Eat "Moon Rice"

July 10, 2025

If we can learn to grow our own food in space, it'll make surviving off Earth less challenging. While plants do grow in space, some genetic improvements are in order. Researchers have unveiled "Moon rice," a genetically manipulated strain of rice that grows much shorter than even dwarf varieties of rice and could be grown reliably in space. They're also simulating microgravity, constantly rotating the rice in all directions to see how it responds.
How Your Flight Home Could Be Broadcasting Earth's Location to Aliens.

July 09, 2025

Alarmingly, a team of scientists propose that every flight you take could be alerting alien civilizations to our existence. I must apologise now as I pack for a flight out to Mexico in a few days! The new research reveals that airport radar systems from Heathrow to JFK are unintentionally broadcasting powerful signals up to 200 light years into space, that’s far enough to reach over 120,000 star systems that might harbor intelligent life! These "accidental technosignatures" would appear obviously artificial to any aliens with technology similar to ours, potentially making every takeoff and landing an announcement that we're here!
Giant Liquid Mirrors Could Revolutionise the Hunt for Habitable Worlds

July 09, 2025

A team of researchers has cracked the code for building space telescopes with mirrors the size of a soccer field, not from perfectly figured glass, but from liquid floating in zero gravity! The new research reveals how a 50-metre liquid mirror telescope could maintain its optical quality for decades despite the constant slewing motions needed to observe different stars, with deformations taking years to propagate from the edges toward the centre. The idea could enable the next generation of space telescopes capable of directly imaging Earth-like planets around other stars, potentially answering the ultimate question: are we alone in the universe?
NASA's Future Telescope Could Solve the Mystery of Life's Origins

July 09, 2025

A team of scientists are preparing to use NASA's upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory to answer one of the most profound questions of all time: How does life begin? Rather than searching for individual signs of life, the team plan to study patterns across dozens of exoplanets to test competing theories about the origins of life; from scenarios where life is so rare we might be alone within 33 light-years, to theories predicting that life emerges wherever basic conditions exist. This approach could transform perhaps our oldest question into testable science, potentially revealing whether our biosphere is an accident or part of a universe teeming with life.
Old Hubble Space Telescope Photos Unlock the Secret of a Rogue Planet

July 04, 2025

Astronomers have made a breakthrough by using 25 year old Hubble images to investigate a potential "rogue planet" drifting through space without a host star. When a brief gravitational microlensing event occurred in 2023, researchers discovered Hubble had photographed the same location in 1997, creating an unprecedented quarter century baseline. Finding no stellar companion in the archival data strengthened evidence for a rogue planet with mass between Earth and Saturn, demonstrating the scientific value of space telescope archives for studying these elusive worlds wandering the Galaxy alone.
If Dark Energy is Decreasing, is the Big Crunch Back on the Menu?

July 03, 2025

Astronomers once wondered if the Universe might one day collapse in on itself in a Big Crunch, but the discovery of dark energy suggested that the expansion of the Universe would accelerate, removing that possibility. New data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggests that dark energy might be changing in strength over time, maybe even going negative. If that result holds, are we due for a Big Crunch? And how long would it take?
Menstrual Cups Tested in Space Flight Conditions for the First Time

June 30, 2025

For long-duration missions, female astronauts generally use hormonal contraception to suppress their periods. But this method has potential health risks and requires special storage. Pads and tampons create waste in space. Now researchers have tested menstrual cups on a sub-orbital rocket flight, where they experienced the force of launch, and found they performed identically to ground control cups. This could provide a new option to female astronauts on future missions.
Tracking Macroplastics Leeching Into Rivers from Space

June 30, 2025

Rivers are one of the main ways that plastics get into the world's oceans, and now we can identify where plastic waste accumulates from space. Researchers used data from the Worldview-3 satellite to identify and map plastic material and polymer-coated surfaces in a watershed on the US-Mexico border. They collected different waste from stream channels and then identified their specific infrared absorption features, matching them to satellite imagery.
What Islands Can Teach Us About Planetary Protection

June 27, 2025

As Charles Darwin explored the Galapagos Islands, he discovered how the different islands allowed for different species to thrive. This is very similar to our current exploration of the Solar System; individual worlds, separated by the vacuum of space. The similarities provide a new insight into predictin planetary contamination risks and improve protection methods. A new paper by Daniel J. Brener and Charlesg S. Cockell uses the spread of life to new islands as a powerful model for rethinking how we prevent Earth's microbes from contaminating other worlds, shifting focus from probability calculations to whether microbes can actually survive in alien environments.
If We Can't Detect the First Stars, Maybe We Can See Their First Galaxies

June 27, 2025

Population III stars are the first generation that formed in the Universe, made from pristine hydrogen and helium, without any heavier "metals." They're difficult to find, surrounded by the early cosmic fog and lasting for only a few million years, but a new paper proposes that Webb could detect the pollution from these first stars as they're enriching the gas around them. There would be a hybrid phase when the first galaxies could contain second-generation stars and the polluted gas from the first stars.
Webb Could Detect if Supermassive Black Holes Formed Directly

June 27, 2025

An unfolding mystery is how early supermassive black holes got so big, so early. Their high mass is tough to explain through a ladder of mergers; instead, astronomers suggest they could have formed directly from huge clouds of gas. In a new paper, researchers propose the signals these directly-forming supermassive black holes might emit, and how they could even be detectable by James Webb before they collapse.
New Propulsion Systems Could Enable a Mission to Sedna

June 26, 2025

The dwarf planet Sedna will reach its closest point to the Sun in 2075, the ideal time to send a mission to study this world that takes 11,000 years to orbit the Sun. In a new paper, researchers consider two exotic propulsion systems for a mission like this: a direct fusion drive, and an enhanced solar sail. Both methods could allow a spacecraft to reach Sedna in under a decade of flight time.
A New Way to Detect Primordial Black Holes Through Their Hawking Radiation

June 26, 2025

Scientists propose a revolutionary new method to detect primordial black holes by hunting for their Hawking radiation. Instead of searching for faint background signals, researchers suggest using the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station to watch for distinctive spikes in positron particles as these ancient black holes pass through our solar system, emitting Hawking radiation.
Antarctica is the Perfect Place to Study Snowball Earth

June 25, 2025

Hundreds of millions of years ago, temperatures cooled on Earth to the point that almost the entire planet was covered in glaciers: snowball Earth. Just how life survived has perplexed scientists for some time! A team of researchers believe they have found answers in Antarctica's tiny meltwater ponds, discovering thriving ecosystems packed with diverse microbes, algae, and microscopic animals. These ice bound oases show how ancient life could have weathered Earth's deepest freeze, and not just survived, but flourished.
How Solar Flares Can Change the Weather on Exoplanets

June 25, 2025

Astronomers know that red dwarf stars can release powerful flares on a regular basis, and these could irradiate nearby planets. But are there other effects? Researchers have simulated four scenarios of flare activity from quiescent to extreme flare activity and found that it can change temperature fluctuations at different levels in the atmosphere. The upper atmosphere actually cools while the middle and lower atmosphere warms up. Ozone can also be depleted and wind speeds dramatically affected.
Mercury - The Tiny Planet That's Been Baffling Scientists Everywhere

June 24, 2025

Mercury doesn't give up its secrets easily. The smallest planet in our Solar System is also one of the most extreme, a sun-scorched, metal-rich world with a puzzling magnetic field and lavas unlike anything found on Earth. Now, groundbreaking laboratory experiments are finally beginning to unlock these mysteries, revealing how this planetary oddball could hold the key to understanding rocky planets throughout the universe.
Pulsars Could Have Tiny Mountains

June 24, 2025

Pulsars are spinning neutron stars, with several times the mass of the Sun compressed into a sphere just 10 km across. They have a theoretical "death line,” a point where pulsars should stop emitting radio waves as they slow down. But researchers have detected two pulsars still beaming radio signals despite being below this death line. One explanation is that there are tiny irregularities on their surfaces, mountains just 1 cm tall. These peaks amplify local electric fields, making it easier for the pulsars to accelerate particles and produce radio emissions that should be impossible.