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So first off this is just wild speculation, but fun wild speculation.
We know that the Material Plane in the Great Beyond is basically the same universe as ours, and that potentially every other setting could exist out there--so I've been thumbing through my Atlas of the Universe with an eye toward scouting out Golarion going off of clues gleaned from various settings. See, I told you this was going to be wildly speculative.
Let's start by looking at our Milky Way Galaxy. It's pretty well explored in most space opera settings: Star Trek alone has carved it into quadrants and gives a pretty good sense of a galaxy carved up between the Changelings, Borg, Klingons and Romulans. You throw in Vorlons, Daleks, Guo'uld and all the other stuff in our galaxy and it's getting pretty crowded.
So let's move out to our neighboring galaxies:
M31 the Andromeda Galaxy. If you've ever seen a map of the Star Wars galaxy, you'll immediately recognize this as that galaxy. So let's assume it is. It's about three million lightyears away...far far away, but close enough for folks with hyperdrives to have occasionally visited (which you get some fair indications in Star Wars lore has happened). That said, if M31 is Star Wars, it's pretty well charted, and not a great candidate for Golarion's universe.
The only other spiral galaxy in our local group (spiral galaxies coalese all the heavier matter useful in making planets in their outer arms, so make the best candidates for having stars with planets) is M33, the Triangulum Galaxy. Not sure if any of you guys know about a game called Dragonstar, by Fantasy Flight Games--but it's really good. The Dragon Empire is located in a galaxy that looks a whole lot like M33. That and it has a huge black nebula at the center with connections to weird eldritch powers and has a very Dark Tapestry feel to it. The planets of the Dragon Empire have roughly Star Wars era technology as well as full knowledge of clerical and divine magic. If a group were to send automaton miners to Aballon and then just lose contact, it would be these guys. Plus according to Dragonstar, the unexplored hinterlands on the Empire are mostly primative (ie. Golarion) tech level worlds which frequently get visited for first contact (or violently subjugated) depending on what House is ruling at the time. They go so far as to suggest that many of these hinterlands worlds could be the ones you're currently gaming on.
So were I a betting man, I'd put Golarion in the deep hinterlands of the Dragon Empire in the Triangulum Galaxy--at least I do in the games I run.
Yeah man. I am all about rackin' up the nerd cred!
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I am a fan of M101,not that that is an arguable reason to place it there. Unfortunately, eliminating galaxies based on unrelated mythos is probably not the most effective or methodical means of ascertaining Golarion's location in our universe. Dragonstar galaxy (even though it is a previous edition) is a good bet.
My mythos has always seemed to be a complete destruction and re-creation of the universe through each new edition, which means that Golarion would only exist in one of a multitude of possible realities in which the universe was made manifest in one of an infinite possible number of ways. Although my last universe was not completely destroyed, it is assumed that the localized interplanar event which caused the "home" world's destruction at some point probably spread out to the rest of the universe, or at least a decent chunk of it. In addition, an AI being named Goth was poised to assimilate at least one entire universe (Material Plane realities) and possibly many others, and I can only assume that at some point this did in fact occur. When you consider the interplanar implications, and the infinite possibilities of the universe based on the information we have about quantum mechanics, it's actually much more difficult to try and discern a world's possible existence in our own, as opposed to one of an infinite number of others which are unrelated and disconnected from our own, except through said quantum mechanics.
Let me just say how squee-ish I get about someone including Goa'uld in a discussion on fantasy RPGs. :P I love me some Stargateses.
M101 really isn't a bad pick either. It's similar looking and a lot bigger (half-again the size of the Milky Way instead of half). Mostly I've been trying for a best fit approach as to where to place things--since obviously the scientific approach has a couple of obvious problems with it.
That said, there's some rationale to trying to eliminate galaxies based on "unrelated" mythoi--they're actually (at least possibly) related. Talking about the Pathfinder cosmology James Jacobs has referenced a bunch of worlds that co-exist with Golarion out there. Vulcan is one that got named--with the suggestion that any published setting could exist somewhere in the Great Beyond (as a mechanism for DMs to port things in from their favorite settings).
I've been trying to figure out what to make of this. I really like the "big idea" of this--that, at least in Pathfinder games, all settings live together in the same universe. Certainly there's got to be a degree of "alternate universes" at play though. Not everything can exist together. Star Trek and Terminator would both have 2013 Earth as a smoking radioactive crater by now, whereas most modern shows portray Earth much as we know it--plus a few alien conspiracies, vampires or whatever. Other stories have 2013 Earth as the World of Tomorrow with jetpacks, flying cars and glass dome cities.
So you have to decide what goes together, then use that lens to see the rest of the universe with. Golarion's super abundant solar system with some form of life on nearly every planet (especially when you look at Akiton and Castrivel) seem to take their cues from the sword and planet romances of the 30's and 40's. You look at what 2013 Earth is like in books of that era and it's pretty World of Tomorrow flavored with wild alien lifeforms on Mars and Venus, or swimming in the Jovian atmosphere. I sort of like that take. From ther you just take the same brush and re-imagine what the races and cultures from other settings might be like as seen through that lens.
At least that's how I've tried to work it out.
More specifically, James has noted that all the different things we like could (but don't necessarily) exist as part of the Golarion setting.
Last time I was around a thread that he was talking about it, he mentioned that Golarion could "share" reality with (say) both Star Trek and Terminator, but didn't likely share it with both... unless you somehow want it to.
Point being, that there are some continuities that plainly don't work together, and thus Golarion couldn't share both as existing, but you can patch in the continuities that you wish to for your own games (a design decision he made on purpose).
Using alternate universes/realities is one way around it. It works for Marvel.
I've struggled quite a bit with this idea myself. How much crossover should there be and what should the results look like? My methodology (because I like the idea and so try to incorporate as much as I can) has been to assume that everything exists unless you get to a clashing point where the two things just can't both be true--and then pick which of the various universes (if any) feels most appropriate to the Pathfinder setting. For example, since neither the Vulcans nor the Vorlons have run into humanity yet, I'm free to imagine both existing in the current era, and since it's not our reality--but rather one of the many Pathfinder realities, we can assume some things about both races. There's lots of lush planets in this universe, enough that most planets in most solar systems support some kind of life. Magic, clerical power and psionics all exist. Plus everything has a certain pulp, sword and planet feel (I sort of imagine that Wayne Reynolds draws everything) with lots of scuffed up strappy armor and wild scenic environments.
So you might have Vulcans and Romulans spread between various planets in the same home system--since with all the life-supporting planets around they hardly have to head out into deep space to find a new home. Perhaps the Vulcans are mostly druids and psions, seeking logic and balance within the IDIC. The Romulans might be scruffy space pirates, swashbucklers, ninjas and barbarians who bask in their intense emotions, tatooing themselves elaborately and donning drow-style fashions.
Likewise you have Vorlons, deep in their Vorlon Empire, hidden away in the cyclopean ruins of their poisonous planet. Ancient half-organic warbeast constructs prowl the acid pools and fungus jungles, killing off the many adventurers who dare to travel there with poweful magics. In the Milky Way Galaxy, they have masqueraded as good outsiders for so long that they must conceal themselves in bulky suits of patina crusted armor to avoid being mistaken for angels. It is rumored that much of the psionic potential of mortal races has something to do with their arcane experiments with the ancestors of many of the galaxy's races.
And so you can have both, flavor them to feel more Pathfinder, and still keep them in the same universe with Cthulhu, Kord and Daleks.
When I get to trickier things like Fringe Earth vs. Walking Dead Earth (or Asgard vs. X-Files Greys vs. Independence Day Aliens), where the two just can't possibly overlap, that's where I invoke alternate universes and pick one that makes sense.
EDIT: There's another rule I go by, called the Morlok Rule. Generally anything can exist independantly on Golarion as an indiginous race, unless it would be "weirder than having Morloks". Thus I get to throw in all the dianogas, cactuars, scrunts or Cloverfield monsters (splinters of Amnion) as I want without sweating their origin too much...because hey, there's Morloks!