It is widely theorized that life on Earth started via a process termed abiogenesis, that is, it arose spontaneously from the chemicals and and energies present where it arose and no required outside influence or intervention from any supernatural beings.
If this is the case, shouldn't abiogenesis be occurring all the time? Shouldn't we be finding new life forms? Could we even tell if we did?
It likely occurred multiple times, but it requires a few variables that aren't really possible anymore.
One - there's the density of biochemicals in a given area
Two - there's the energy requirement
The strongest theories behind this basically state: in some locations, there were a ton of precursors or other biologically-important chemicals floating around, and there was an unfathomable amount of energy/radiation hitting that "soup."
There's also a related concept that all this soup, radiated or not, still depending on it getting frothed up.. like soap-bubbles. In this concept, there may have been many such bubbles formed that contained the necessary ingredients, but it may have taken awhile for a few lucky ones to gain "life" in that they could split at will and create new "bubbles" on their own.
A rudimentary cellular structure and a soap bubble are extremely similar, in case you weren't aware.
As for energy/radiation, the first single-celled organisms came about roughly one or two billion years ago. Earth then, and Earth today, are very different. No multi-celled animals of today could survive in that environment. The solar radiation that bombarded the Earth in those days was fairly intense, and the environment itself was most likely very toxic. It was a combination of those variables that would allow abiogenesis to occur; the energy hitting certain biologically-important chemicals or precursors would produce changes.
If it happened at all (likely did), it just wouldn't be possible today, at least not likely. It may be happening, who knows. It doesn't just spontaneously produce some creature we can readily see - such a production of "life" could be happening fairly frequently, but they may be dying soon after "creation" or they may share the same characteristics.
It's not like we have documented every single creature on this planet - it could be possible we have missed a few single-celled organisms that have settled somewhere out of reach.
But they have attempted to produce man-made abiogenesis in the lab, in experiments designed to reproduce a possible early-Earth environment. I don't think they have succeeded, but they may have seen the "creation" of biologically-important chemicals out of a soup of lesser precursors. In any case, the early environment isn't something scientists have a perfectly clear picture of, nor is it easy to reproduce every possible variable that may have been important in the creation of the first viable organisms.
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