David, I believe you had a question about the big bang and light coming
from other stars and how it made it to "here." I just want to remind you
that the Big Bang occurred everywhere, it occurred "here" too. As the
Universe has been expanding everywhere, including "here," the density has
been dropping and galaxies and stars have been forming and evolving. If
we assume that space is homogeneous and at a certain age after the Big
Bang every place in space is on the average looking the same, then by
looking at objects far away we can see how objects looked like long ago,
because of the finite value of the speed of light, and that is the way
that objects "here" would have looked like that long ago too. If the
speed of light were infinite then we would not have that chance of
looking at the past by looking far away since everthing would be viewed
as it is now, the past would be hidden from our observations. But the
past we see out there is the same past that we have had "here," the
Milky Way galaxy could have gone through a quasar stage, for example.
The matter of our solar system came from "here" even if it evolved first
through the insides of another star or so, but it did not come to "here"
from a Big Bang that occurred "elsewhere."