Anything of import that happens is liable to get our full attention here on earth. It’ll be front and center in newspapers and on the cable channels, bandied about and discussed ad nauseum on social media. The talking heads will be uttering their mix of swill and wisdom, and many of us will either have our boxers in a bunch or be happy as pigs in shit.
But zooming out into the solar system and universe, all will be quiet, relatively speaking. None of what happens here, as far as we know, makes a hill of beans of difference in the larger scheme of things. For all we know, we’re isolated in the universe, screaming into the void, immersed in trivial pursuits, engaged in fruitless arguments, killing each other out of aggression or self-defense, or because our religious beliefs egg us on with threats of eternal damnation or promise of great reward; fighting stupidity and ignorance instead of pursuing cures and vaccines and inroads on suffering, all the while occasionally still doing something amazing for the benefit of humankind.
All of this in a massive solar system in a corner of an even more massive galaxy in a mind-blowingly enormous universe, where everything is expanding, and what happens here on Earth stays here on Earth. As far as we know.
Well, except for space probes and rockets, a relative handful of humans, and thousands of animals.
3 Cents' 