The transfer of life from one planet to another("panspermia") seems plausible in principle. However, the immense energy released during asteroid impacts makes survival unlikely in many cases, as the very organisms hitching a ride may be destroyed in the process. That said, evidence suggests that microbes shielded deep within rocks could potentially endure the violent stages of ejection, space travel, and planetary re-entry.

Beyond panspermia, I lean toward another perspective:

Life exists because it serves as a natural means of accelerating "entropy" production. In an otherwise relatively stable system, life provides a shortcut, catalyzing processes that dissipate energy gradients far more efficiently than non-living chemistry alone.

At the microbial level, metabolism drives the dissipation of redox gradients, pushing chemical systems toward lower free-energy states. While cells locally maintain order and complexity, their activity increases the overall entropy of their environment. In this sense, life is not a violation of thermodynamic laws but a direct expression of them.

If this is true, life may be extremely common in the universe, arising naturally wherever the right conditions exist to favor energy dissipation.

What may be rare, however, is complex life. Complexity requires not only a lucky balance of stability and change, but also the ability to endure, or even be forced forward, by catastrophic events such as mass extinctions, without wiping out all of it. Earth's active techntonic plates provided yet another means to enable evolution.