"Whether we're born in San Francisco or Sudan or close to the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, we are the products of a billion-year lineage of wandering stardust. We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from." -- Jill Tarter --
(Her talk is on the TED site...
here. And if you haven't run across this site yet, check it out and have fun!)