Yet, there is only one form of life on earth exhibiting cellular metabolism and DNA/RNA replication. That original life form formed as soon as the earth became suitable for life. In the 3+ billion years since, there has been no new life form created that we know of despite the ongoing unfathomable computations.
That is not unexpected. There are three forms worth considering, actually: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. The first two share DNA/RNA replication, but they operate in completely different ways. The third is dramatically more complex than either of the former two, yet emerged from them. Once the first two existed, they rapidly filled almost all possible niches available at that time, and there was no space for a third form to emerge (lest it be immediately consumed by the first two), unless that third form was exceptionally competitive (like eukaryotes were and are). The first two forms did emerge relatively early on. The third form, representing one of the most stunning advances in the history of life on Earth, took over two billion years of 10^35+ ops/second of continuous computation to emerge. In terms of total compute, that's about 10^25 greater than today's largest known frontier training run. After that point, evolutionary selection pressure began operating at higher levels of abstraction, selecting for complex multicellular morphological form and later on intelligence, culture, and beyond, over several additional billion years, while bactera and archaea continued to consume all available microscopic niches.
Beyond that, life itself modified the environment that produced the original process of abiogenesis. The early Earth featured a carbon-rich acidic ocean. After life emerged, metabolism began altering the planet’s redox chemistry, consuming available chemical free energy, transforming atmospheric and ocean composition, and eventually oxygenating the surface environment. In other words, the machinery that produced life was not left running in the same state. This is why I called it a self-modifying search engine -- search accelerants operate by changing the search landscape that the engine operates over.
On 1 February 1871 Charles Darwin wrote about these publications to Joseph Hooker, and set out his own speculation that the original spark of life may have been in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts,—light, heat, electricity &c present, that a protein compound was chemically formed". Darwin explained that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm_little_pond
"There's strikingly little agricultural innovation in this corner of France" they mused... as the ground shook from tanks and shrapnel bursts.
A glass of sea water seems so peaceful... with its turbulent combat hellscape of voracious protists and viral shrapnel, where you're lucky to make it through a day without being eaten or lysed.
Any "new life" has 0 chance in the crowded, highly competitive ecosystem.
Well, yeah. Starting from absolute scratch is a lot harder than adapting something that already exists to new conditions.
Network effects + energetic fficiencies. On an energy landscape that includes integration over very short and very long lifetimes, the thalweg of utility/energy rests right about where the current codon optimizations are. And any schemes that deviate don't get to share in the others' bounty. Reusing your foods' effort saves a lot, metabolically.