Science writer Elise Cutts tells us at Quanta that life’s raw materials abound in the universe:

How simple chemistry led to complex living organisms stands among the great unsolved mysteries of science. The recent studies of asteroid and comet material add to the evidence that the first steps of the assembly process happen in space — and happen very readily. Everywhere we look, space seems to teem with biology’s raw materials. Saturn’s moon Titan has lakes of liquid methane and ethane that are made of organic molecules, as are its hydrocarbon sand dunes. Organic molecules called tholins are probably responsible for Pluto’s reddish blush. Veritable zoos of extraterrestrial organics are found in meteorites. Organic dust drifts between the stars and rains down on Saturn from its rings.

“The Universe Is Teeming With Complex Organic Molecules,” November 13, 2024

She asks, “How does organic complexity develop without biological evolution?”

That’s a curious question because it assumes that biological evolution is something like a natural law which must happen. Apparently not. The origin of life remains a mystery:

Organic molecules on the early Earth took a new, remarkable step up in complexity. They somehow organized themselves into something alive. Some hypotheses for the origins of life on Earth involve a starter kit of organic material from space. The “PAH world” hypothesis, for instance, posits a stage of the primordial soup that was dominated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Out of this slurry the first genetic molecules emerged.

In general, understanding how complex organics form in space and end up on planets might give us a better idea of whether life has arisen on other worlds, too. If the raw materials of life on Earth formed in the interstellar medium, the stuff of life should be everywhere in the universe. “Complex Organic Molecules,”

Perhaps, but as she acknowledges, life on other planets is “untestable,” short of actually finding it. We look for “biosignatures,” that is, signs of life:

Yet it’s tricky to determine whether a given organic molecule is a biosignature or not. If scientists were to find sufficiently complex organic molecular assemblages, that would be enough to convince at least some researchers that we’ve found life on another world. But as comets and asteroids reveal, the nonliving world is complex in its own right. Compounds thought to be biosignatures have been found on lifeless rocks, like the dimethyl sulfide Hänni’s team recently identified on 67P. “Complex Organic Molecules,”

Life is a process but we are always looking for a state of things. We have no idea what starts the process.