Should drop bags of these extremeophiles onto the solar system's moons and planets.
Also I think there's treaties stopping you from polluting other planets.
It's inconceivable that extraterrestrial life would be indistinguishable from terrestrial.
It's also clear we've seen exactly zero signs of any sort of off-Earth life in the solar system. Nothing.
NASA conceives of it, along with all 128 national governments who have signed (and in 104 cases ratified) the Outer Space Treaty.
It may be that Earth is the only place in Sol with life (I’m a software engineer not an exobiologist, so I don’t even have a ballpark estimate for either multiple abiogenesis events or panspermia between any two bodies), but the only way to have a good shot at knowing is to be over-cautious until the actual scientists have done their work.
And right now, those scientists are saying “sterilise the probes going to these places: ...”.
For example, how many instances are there of two species evolving independently becoming indistinguishable? Zero.
> those scientists are saying
Scientists aren't immune to politics and irrational thinking.
Planetary Protection Officers.
Edit: what a good story idea.
Yeah, we would with 100% certainty. Life on Earth is based on the sum of an incredible number of random events. (See "butterfly effect".) The chances of coming up with the same, or even remotely related, result elsewhere are zero.
It's less than the chance there's a doppelganger of you here on Earth with the same DNA (and he's not the twin your mom lost).