Hi Denise,

We can't know for sure until we observe it, but I think it would be possible. Of course, in general we don't know under what range of conditions life can exist, but even if we consider Earth there are some interesting variations in temperatures and day & night right here. Think about the life near our poles - the month long days and nights start sounding like science fiction to me!

One possibility might be a planet orbiting two stars which were relatively close together. Then things might not be too different from having one star. Or the stars could be far enough apart that the planet could orbit one star and the second star could just be an extra light and heat source. If Jupiter were a big enough to be a star we would have a situation like that both here on Earth and on Jupiter's moons.

Even if the situation were more extreme like could go into modes of hibernation like happens here on Earth. How extreme things could be and still allow like we don't know yet.

One of the reasons why we are interested in studying the other places in our solar system is because we want to figure out under what conditions life can arise and thrive. We know it is here. Is it or was is ever on Mars? Jupiter's moon Europa?

Terry