Oh yeah, a space thread: Klingons! Uranus!
He’s writing for a general audience. The statement isn’t supposed to be taken literally.
The AG is estimated to be approximately 2.3 million light years away -- one light year being the *distance* light travels in a year at its constant speed of 186,000 miles per second. It works out to about 5.9 trillion(with a T) miles.
They believe Andromeda will "mingle" with our Milky Way galaxy in about 4 or 5 billion years. That's about the same time when our Sun should be in the process of destroying itself by moving to the Red Giant stage. This will happen when the Sun uses up much of the material it needs to continue nuclear processes. Without that outward push from nuclear reactions gravity will win out and cause an implosion. The implosion, in turn, will ultimately result in a "rebounding" which will cause the Sun to grow to an enormous size and eventually engulf all planets up to Mars.