We know the limited range of conditions and requirements for how it started. We can replicate the chemistry of life - what I'm getting at is that we can rule ou

We know the limited range of conditions and requirements for how it started. We can replicate the chemistry of life - what I'm getting at is that we can rule out acts of God or magic. Successfully sparking the chemistry of life from scratch is still a profound and interesting endeavor, and might have value beyond things like the Drake equation and where to look for likely extraterrestrials. I'm just saying the answer is sufficiently bounded that it's not very mysterious - there's not a lot of room for anything radically weird. We're not going to find out that the great spaghetti monster visits planets every hundred million years and deposits special life building nanobots. Panspermia, weird multiplanet exotic chemical exchange from massive impacts, etc are all possible contributors to the origin of life. Whatever the answer ends up being, modern science is 100% capable of replicating any chemical or physical occurrence that played a part. It might require impractical scales of energy or mass - I personally suspect you need an ocean sized laboratory to achieve the variety of chemicals and sequences of processes to get the right mix of molecules that combine into replicators, and you need a lot of replicators before you get dynamic life that starts evolving. Complex amino acids have been found in asteroids and space debris, so maybe the spark was space junk? It's a neat question but we're not looking for elan vital or anything fundamental anymore. We know what the mechanics of life are at a subatomic level, so the particular occurrence of life on earth is now a mystery similar to the interstellar origin story of matter in the solar system - we lack specifics but have a great general handle on how and why things are the way they are.