There has been progress within the theory of non equilibrium thermodynamics which hint that local entropy decrease is baked into the physics. That is to say lif

There has been progress within the theory of non equilibrium thermodynamics which hint that local entropy decrease is baked into the physics. That is to say life just kind of falls out of the physics of thermodynamic systems of a certain type. That certain type being anything that dissipates a source of energy. Personally I think abiogenesis is relatively easy and there is large scale panspermia going on. The universe is like a yoghurt, bacteria everywhere and novel abiogenic origins occurring all over the place, although there are probably dominant kinds of life. DNA based being one.