All scientific evidence supports the belief that the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe. Therefore it’s to be expected that the conditions for life could occur elsewhere. The oldest evidence of life is found in rocks that are 3.8 billion yrs old. This is only a few hundred million years after the oldest rocks formed after the Earth’s surface solidified. Therefore the initiation of life here seems to have been a very probable event even though the substructure of our universe is not. If it hadn’t happened in the first several hundred million years there were still billions of years left in which it could happen. I don’t believe there’s a big question of whether life is unique here or not just because we haven’t discovered any in our limited search. That’s actually a religious stance, like this planet was the chosen one. Just because all other local planets appear to be dumb as rocks doesn’t mean a thing. I believe we can rationally posit life as relatively common throughout the universe. Since solar systems are very common, at least primitive life must be common throughout the universe.
Whether life started here or not is another story. Interstellar transportation of bacteria on fragments of rock that are blasted into space by meteors is very feasible. Spores can lie dormant for more than a hundred million years.
The assertion that biological life is a common phenomenon is supported by more than its rapid development here. The molecules on which our form of life is based commonly occur in space and meteors. The Murchison meteorite was found to contain the building blocks of proteins in 1969. These amino acids were not created by biological processes but simply arose from the complex chemical mix in the meteor in its environment in deep space. Formaldehyde and numerous other organic compounds have been detected in the Giant Molecular Clouds in deep space. These clouds are the nurseries for infant stars. Organic material that can form cell-like membranes has been extracted from meteorites.
All of the chemicals that we are based upon exist in abundance in naturally occurring environments throughout our galaxy of 100 billion stars and throughout the universe of hundreds of billions of similar galaxies.
It’s astounding that we live in a universe in which particles can organize into people and other living beings. Just consider how the energy of the Big Bang spontaneously turned into people. E= people. No inquisitive mind can ignore this fact. How did it happen? Why did it happen? How might the sequence of events have gone differently and failed to produce life? Adding to that wonder is the fact that this depends on an exact delicate physical structure. Had this structure been slightly different in any of a large number of ways, the result would have been a sterile universe. Just a slight change in the amount of energy and matter produced by the Big Bang would have resulted in a universe without galaxies or stars, let alone people. The tip of the iceberg that modern science can see is incredible, but importantly, it hints at a deeper reality that is even more astounding.