so, i explain; i should first off point out some things that may or may not be obvious.
1. i am not a scientist. I like science and read a lot of it, and i try to be factual, but, i can only tell you what i took away from the stuff i read, and i can be wrong.
2. the science of abiogenesis is still new .. like, REALLY new. We are at the "hypothesis" stage, although the work has been approached seriously, it's not quackery. Nothing like "wormholes to FTL travel" bullshit.
3. some injectures are my own, i have (i believe) realistic expectations that they are correct, but again, speculation is still speculation, no matter how smart i am.
Abiogenesis is the theory that organic life forms from non-organic compounds through a series of mechanical factors. Pressure, heat, impact, chemical reactions, eventually lead to the spontaneous formation of "machines", chemical structures that have the propriety of "eating" and "replicating", through sheer numbers, luck, and a purely mechanical form of evolution. These eventually grow in complexity until they become bigger and more complex and bigger and more complex and at one point they are "alive". There is no division line in this process between when something is alive and not-alive.
There are a number of viable abiogenesis models. I will link one video, but there are more, all of which are different, but all of which have these thinsg in common:
1. the models represented are viable, and realistic
2. the forces that action the model are purely mechanical and chemical
Now, i did say that there are multiple viable models of this phenomenon; so, which one is correct?
It doesn't really matter. We have at least one model which is realistic and viable and therefore we can - until evidence to the contrary emerges - state without fail that abiogenesis is happening, somewhere, all the time.
To drive a point home, if tomorrow let's say, definitive proof comes out that GOD CREATED MANKIND. Abiogenesis would *still* be happening, because it's a byproduct of the universe we live in, just like erosion, chemical reactions, combustion, thermal expansion, it is a physical phenomenon that is spontaneous and will always happen: it may not always end up creating life, but it can.
Also, it's totally possible that there isn't ONE correct abiogenesis model, but in fact that there are multiple correct models - just like there are multiple ways that dirt can stick to a ball of glue, because essentially the process is the same.
So .. bacteria in space. Complex chemical chains are likely to be everywhere. At the stage that we are in, what we want to know is a X value of "statistical amount of occurrence of long chain molecules over Y number of a exoplanets", because, our endgame is to find out how common intelligent life is, and while we have a pretty good idea that abiogenesis is what made life surface on Earth, we still can't say how likely it is that the same has happened in other earthlike planets. We're not even sure how common earthlike planets are.
It's totally feasible that full life is quite rare, due to the necessity of a number of exceptional occurrences, but basic chemical machinery, that ought to be suuuuuper common, it's really a matter of seeing how far along the development they are.
Phosphene, is a gas that *can* be a byproduct of life, and, it also can not. I do not understand this exactly, but have been explained that it is due to the fact that with the known atmosphere of Venus, phosphene would not last long before it beinds to other chemicals, thus it needs a constant production of gas to remain visible in the spectrum - ergo, bacteria.
Or something not.
Let's not get excited.
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