eh..

>"The atoms that built the solar system, the planets, and even our own bodies may have come from another galaxy perhaps as far away as one light-year—nearly 6 trillion miles."

Must be a typo.

Yeah.. the Milky Way alone is 100,000 light years across.

I saw that too. Probably should have been a "giga-light year" or something.

Came here to post :-) Considering the nearest star is about 4 light years away it doesn't seem that impressive.

Photons exciting particles are not winds. I hate these metaphors. Like the Solar Wind. It can misguide very smart people. I was sitting on a plane next to a former deputy director of NASA. After retiring he became a professor in Ann Arbor, where I received my aerospace engineering degree. I asked him to explain how the solar winds accelerate away from the sun. He proceeded to explain it was just like the throat of a rocket engine. I was so shocked I stopped talking to him. At a density of 3 "atoms" per cubic centimeter the solar winds are closer to vacuum than the very best vacuum achievable in a laboratory, by a factor of 30! There is no fluid dynamics that works when particles cannot interact with each other. Navier-Stokes works on real fluids, not on vacuum. So call me when The Atlantic has an article titled Intergalactic Currents That Built The Milky Way.

Over the years I have seen astronomy become more like biology - diverse both in the kinds of objects it describes and their behavior.