At least 3 planets in habital zone, one star:

Originally posted by DeepThought
Red dwarves tend to flare a lot so although the temperature is right for liquid water everything else is wrong for life. The planets are tidally locked and radiation from stellar storms will be intense.

There could be sweet spots. If the planets have atmospheres then there could be regions between the sunlit side and the dark side that were kept warm by the sun but didn't get too badly affected by radiation.

Life on earth appears to have begun in the oceans, and water not only provides a very effective temperature balancing mechanism, but is also largely immune from radiation problems.

Originally posted by twhitehead
There could be sweet spots. If the planets have atmospheres then there could be regions between the sunlit side and the dark side that were kept warm by the sun but didn't get too badly affected by radiation.

Life on earth appears to have begun in the oceans, and water not only provides a very effective temperature balancing mechanism, but is also largely immune from radiation problems.

Yes, I'm thinking that being tidally locked in this case might be an advantage, given that red dwarfs do tend to flare considerably. Right along the planet's terminator, or on the dusk side of it, there could be good conditions for life in places reasonably insulated from the star's occasional tantrums.

Originally posted by Soothfast
Yes, I'm thinking that being tidally locked in this case might be an advantage, given that red dwarfs do tend to flare considerably. Right along the planet's terminator, or on the dusk side of it, there could be good conditions for life in places reasonably insulated from the star's occasional tantrums.

Life here on Earth is really tenacious and I expect we will find the same anywhere the conditions are even half way suited for LAWKI.

So if there is energy, water, phosphorous, and other minerals, life will pop up, you can see that in the deep ocean vents, nowhere near the surface yet there it is, life fully dependent on those hot water vents which seem to be a near permanent feature of the deep ocean, so it seems clear that's all life needs no matter if the atmosphere is composed of pure CO2 and sulfuric acid rain and 900 degrees, well pure CO2 and Sulfuric and under 100 degrees C and liquid water. Was thinking of Venus. Even there, some scientists suspect there may be microbes living on top of that 1000 + PSI atmosphere.