Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, according to a new paper by Australian astrobiologists. In research aiming to understand how life might develop, the scientists realised new life would commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their fledgling planets...

Are we alone in the universe? Are we one of a crowd? This hour, we travel the cosmos with TED science curator David Biello, exploring where we are in the search for alien life.

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How did life start on Earth? The answer is a big scientific mystery scientists are actively investigating. After talking with many scientists, host Regina G. Barber found that an abundance of water on Earth is most likely key, in some way, to the origin of life — specifically, in either deep sea hydrothermal vents or in tide pools. It's for this reason some scientists are also exploring the potential for life in so-called "water worlds" elsewhere in the solar system, like some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This episode, Regina digs into two water-related hypotheses for the origin on life on Earth — and what that might mean for possible alien life.

Have another scientific mystery you want us to cover on a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we might feature your idea on a future episode!

JPL hires Cal State Los Angeles civil engineering students with NASA grant. The interns can do research for NASA and learn about connections between astrobiology and science here on Earth.

It's time to expect the unexpected, says Natalie Cabrol, one of the world's top astrobiologists and author of an authoritative book on the hunt for life's origins – and ET

Our arm of the Milky Way is filled with older, metal-rich stars. New research suggests these might provide the best conditions for life to form on their planets

The massive, potentially rocky planets orbit in the "habitable zone" of a star 22 light-years away.

The discovery of huge amounts of water ice and possible organic compounds on the heat-blasted planet Mercury suggests that the raw materials necessary for life

Long a subject of speculation, our neighbor has yet to yield signs of life. But that hasn't kept people from imaging it's there.

The search for signs of life in a mysterious star system hypothesized to potentially harbor an "alien megastructure" is now underway.

Our conceptions of alien life are based on a sample of one: Earth’s life. That means even our wildest imaginings are likely to be completely off beam

Extraterrestrial oceans are an obvious place to search for alien life, but getting there and having a look won't be easy, says NASA's Kevin Hand in his book Alien Oceans

We may not have found alien life yet, but new methods and the discovery of exoplanets and extreme life on Earth is revolutionising the hunt, says the doyenne of SETI research

Extraterrestrial oceans are an obvious place to search for alien life, but getting there and having a look won't be easy, says NASA's Kevin Hand in his book Alien Oceans

The growth and reproduction of yeast and E.coli suggests that alien life could be thriving in some giant exoplanets.

Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveals secrets about the composition of water beneath the icy surface of Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon, including an abundance of CO2.

NASA's curiosity rover has identified signs of thiophenes on the surface of the red planet and Washington State University astronomers believe they were formed by biological processes.

Professor Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believes astronomers should broaden their horizon's as they scan the cosmos for signs of life.

A new research paper suggests that life forms, if occurring in other planets, do not need to be similar to what we know of them on Earth.