Comment by cvoss
7 hours ago
In some sense, our small size with respect to astronomical-scale processes does not make us all that fragile, because we are also very short-lived with respect to these things.
Afraid of the impending collision of Andromeda with the Milky Way? Not to worry. Life as we know will be gone by then. Huge processes like galactic mergers are "in slow motion" relative to our every day processes due to light speed bounds. The time they take to occur is enormous because the distances involved are enormous. In a cool way, the presence and influence of an astronomical object is just as insignificant to our processes as the presence and influence of one electron, and for the same reason: enormous difference of scale. The big stuff is no more scary than the small stuff.
Reminds me of my favorite writing prompt that was so good it was it's own story too:
"It’s been publicly confirmed that our galaxy is within the open maw of a massive galaxy-eating beast. The beast can’t move faster than light, so it’ll take hundreds of millions of years for it to finally bite down. This is something that humans will just have to live with"
(I don't think you can actually tell a good story with this, it's a background detail you would put in some other story).