Late night science anxiety

"Mom, when I go to another planet, I want to take Pipapupa with me." (Pipapupa is his stufffed cat.)

"You want her to accompany you on your space adventures?" I asked.

"I don't want her to get burned when the sun expands and burns the Earth up."

"Oh, sweetie... you've been worrying about this a lot lately. That won't happen for billions of years. That's a really long time."

"That's like a night and two days and a hundred thousand nights and another day and another night and a another day and a another night and a week and..."

I've worried about this for a while... that his comprehension of time would be so far behind his comprehension of all of the apocalyptic scenarios in astrophysics. Then it looked like he might shake off space as an interest for a while. Guess not.

He lay there silent for a few minutes, then...

"The satellites need to shoot lasers down onto my playground and pull the Earth into another solar system, where it will be safe."

"What a great idea.... we'll move to Proxima Centauri or somewhere."

I stroked his hair, trying to get him back to sleep.

"Mom, every time I try to fall asleep, my brain just goes to science."