A recent article at the New Scientist reports research that suggests (along with a litany of other similar results and studies) that the laws of physics may not hold to be exactly the same across the universe. This would suggest that Earth would indeed be in some type of fortunate position for our bio-chemistry to support life.
While I will note before-hand that there is various scientific skepticism about these findings (which I would hope there to be, given these results would reportedly fly in the face of many integral understandings of Physics on Earth and in the universe), and though I am not even a slight-amateur about Physics (I can't claim to have ever taken even a survey course on the subject), I'd like to comment on something interesting about the suggestion.
I'd welcome the idea of variability in laws of physics across universal systems, should it turn out to be repeatedly confirmed. In my studies in biology and anthropology, I've found myself increasingly in agreement with the idea that no entity or feature follows any one rule or mechanism to achieve its function.
My recent research into the origins and mechanisms behind human speech and language brought me to understand the inner-workings of that environmental phenomena as follows: language as we know was neither born in any specific instance nor was it due to the existence of any one trait, be it neocortical or physiological. It appears to have developed on a continued spectrum of time and formulation around the existence and maintenance of several coinciding traits such as enhanced breathing control, gestures, ability to sharpen intonation, and neocortical expansion (and the skills being based in more than one area of the brain).
Language and speech could not have originated based off any rules to come about in any specific moment and due to a a single rule or entity determining its function to simply "switch on". Cave paintings in Lascaux, France have been popularly viewed as the "ah-ha!" moment for language, where a revolution of language simply exploded in Western Europe. However, evidence from North Africa and parts of Australia showing the ability for intentional abstract and complex though show that these abilities developed, if even in a more rudimentary sense, over a period of time. Why then would language suddenly burst from nowhere?
To extrapolate this idea to include the Earth, we would have to look at how processes on Earth work juxtaposed to its organisms. Organisms will tend to exist, evolve, or go extinct as a result of changes or continuations of ecological processes on Earth. That is, the organism affects and lives as a result of its context. If we view the Earth in a similar manner, it would be seen with the Universe as we would view an organism to its context on Earth. If one environment suits life a certain way on Earth, and this can and has changed over millions and millions of years to accommodate changing landscapes, why would the same not hold true for Earth in a constantly growing and changing Universe?
So if time, environment, and the intermingling of different physiological parts of an organism are what may have created the situation to sustain the emergence of human language as we know it, why would certain laws based off of universal and environments in space not yield a similar result for the emergence of the the chemistry necessary for life on earth? We already know that geologic events have profound impacts on what happens to biological processes here on earth both in animal and plant life, we know that other celestial events such as the moons activity influences oceanographic activity, so why would it be such a leap to understand the biochemical processes that sustain life to be subject to specific physics laws that may govern a certain part of a galaxy?
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