Remember, the ancient Israelites had no idea just how vast and old the universe is. Heck, we didn't even know that there were other galaxies until a century or so ago. Therefore, when Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," it could be referring to the universe as we know it . . . but it doesn't have to be. To Moses "the heavens and the earth" where the part of the universe visible to his naked eyes, so it could be referring only to our home planet or solar system.
Alternatively, it could indeed be referring to the whole universe, but verse 2 skips over 13 billion years of cosmic history to focus on what was important to Israel, the creation of the world they actually lived on.
If this is the case, we note that before day 1 starts, we have an earth covered in a primordial ocean. According to Job 38 (at work so I don't have the exact verse on-hand), this primordial ocean was swaddled in thick clouds. Now, when God says, "Let there be light," the Hebrew is Yihi 'or, with yihi being the imperfect form of the verb hayah. Unlike bara, this verb does not mean that the subject never existed in any form before.
For example, in the story of Ruth, when Naomi finds out that Boaz looked out for her daughter-in-law, she says, "May he be (yihi) blessed." She's obviously not saying that blessing never existed in the universe before, nor even that Boaz had never been blessed before (he was, after all, a wealthy landowner). She was simply asking that the Lord's blessing be manifest upon Boaz for the good deed he had done.
In the same way, we can read, "And light was" (veyhi 'or) not to mean that light never existed anywhere in the universe before, but as meaning that God was now parting the enshrouding clouds so that light could manifest on the primordial ocean, thus beginning the process of preparing the heavens (in the sense of the sky or atmosphere) and the earth for life to exist.
Shalom
The work by men like Bernard Haisch and his coauthors points to the fundamental background state (the zero point field) being the 'sea of spacetime' into which God spoke creative waves. The opening of this realm of spacetime has at the leading 'edge' a soliton of time, but within the volume of spacetime are many continuua of space and time geometries, only one of which is our '4D' realm.
I am convinced that life is ubiquitous in this realm. However, the Bible teaches me that spiritual life is not ubiquitous to this 4D realm, that it is one of the special conditions established by The Creator. I postulate that life is interwoven with the 4D realm due to the reality of a completely different dimension I call --for want of a better term-- the dimension of life force. I postulate there is also a dimension of spirit which by God's Creating can intertwine with the dimension of life force in the specially created beings, like humans/the reborn. Jesus told Nicodemus that except a man be born of water and the spirit ... it is noteworthy that in my paradigm the dimensions of life force and spirit are independent of dimensions time and space, except where intertwined with these other dimensions.
The consciousness of a living thing is sourced somewhere else from spacetime, yet uses the realm of spacetime to accumulate information and thus 'grow in Grace and knowledge.'
The earliest attributes we learn of God are that God is conscious, that God is Creative, that God is love, and that God is Spirit. Each dimension of His Creating has a means to be 'touched' by the IS of God.
All variable expressions possible in each dimension and in all the interwinings of these expressions are accessible to God but cannot bind Him. Jesus showed this by rising from the grave, because death could not bind Him. Imperfection could not resist His miraculous transformations (miracles), and limits could not defy His creative commands (feeding thousands with meager rations).
It is often asked by skeptics 'why would being so much more technologically advanced than we humans waste so much time visiting our planet?' The simplest answer is, perhaps these other beings lack something God has created in humans, namely the dimensional quality of spirit. The Big Bang brought about the initial conditions which through His Word have brought forth we and they and the Angels. But even with their abilities, Angels are inferior to humans. Jesus/The Word made flesh Who dwelt among us/God with us made Himself a little lower than the Angels to be with us. His miraculous living shows that 'less than' was not a measure of technologies, and He told His Disciples, These things I do ye shall do and greater still.'