Chris said
My response was the post that I posted.Our galaxy was never in the same place as Andromeda, or any other galaxy. The Universe was already a very big place before the first galaxies formed. And when galaxies did form, they did so because of the gravitational attraction of clumped matter (especially dark matter). That clumping is a bit mysterious still, but is presumed to stem from quantum level fluctuations in the very earliest Universe, which propagated as density fluctuations that seeded the first gravitational collapses that produced the first stars and galaxies.
This is consistent with basic theory: if you have an inhomogeneous medium (even at the tiniest level), it will get clumpier with time, until eventually you have a bunch of isolated concentrations of matter- pretty much what we see in the Universe today.
To understand the post is to understand the meaning, of how such an image can be formed.
Read Chris's statement and find the scientific logic.