If we’re going full speculation - Microbial life is probably not too uncommon, almost certainly present in our own solar system beyond Earth (and then the big

If we’re going full speculation - Microbial life is probably not too uncommon, almost certainly present in our own solar system beyond Earth (and then the big question - does it always originate on its planet, or is cross planetary contamination a thing?) Complex life that can build tools to send itself to orbit is probably a whole deal less common, but we’re not the only ones nor the first ones in the universe. It’s just that the scales (time, distance, energy) involved are so wild that the odds of any 2 forms of life encountering each other is practically 0. Well, if cross contamination between planets is a thing, the most likely way for 2 such complex life forms to interact would be for them to have developed in parallel in the same solar system, and then one discovering the other.