I think there's maybe more risk with the solar system being thrown off balance with other gravitational forces pulling things out of orbit. Even if earth just gets pulled away from the sun a little we are screwed. Or even the moon pulled away from earth somewhat.

It's even safer. The odds that it's coming directly at us to "collide" is low. Moving towards us doesn't mean it's moving directly at us. If you're driving down the road, all cars going in the other direction get doppler shifted. They're coming towards you, they pass beside you (hopefully), and then they're moving away from you.

and lose the character of the spiral arm configuration? For what? A blob??

Well, if they collide (and merge), they'll also fling a lot of stars into the void, but we aren't too sure anymore that's actually gonna happen. NASA explains why (YT, 2:30min).

Blue shift, it's moving towards you, the photons are being "compressed" to a higher, bluer frequency. Redshift, the light is being "stretched" to a lower, redder frequency. Both only noticeable at significant fractions of the spped of light, relativistic speed.

Something ominous about the post is that a cosmic object that is moving towards you at a steady rate is consided "blueshifted" in the past tense, it's velocity is steady. If a galaxy is "Blueshifting" in the present tense, then that galzy is somehow accelerating at you, which is impossible unless it's under direct control by an entity, presumably a kardeshev level 3 civilization.

Yes which would be very odd for a far away object

No, it's just depressed and that makes us feel sad and worried for it.

If it's billions of light years away it might be just a little longer than that.

Could it potentially be an object orbiting around the cosmic center that just so happens to have an orbital path that crosses us?

I have to admit that astronomy is what caused me to change majors, but that's because I stopped going to class when the lesson was, "This is a terrestrial planet, it's rocky," and my first exam was like, "If it's 5:45pm in Tanzina on October 15th, how many degrees is the moon above the horizon?"

If something is red shifting, it's accelerating away from you. If something is blue shifting, it's accelerating towards you. An entire galaxy accelerating towards you is somewhat concerning.

You know how the sound of things moving from you changes? Towards you the pitch is higher, away from you it is lower. The same happens with light. We know how some things should look like, so if they are more toward red or blue, we know their speed relative to us. Blue = towards us = "we will collide" (you also do not collide with every car with a siren where you hear that effect).

I know you can't see this comment but maybe someone else will find it useful

Just like how a siren changes pitch when it's coming from a vehicle passing by due to the Doppler effect, the same thing happens to moving light sources due to relativistic effects.

Usually astronomical objects are redshifting because the universe is expanding and are thus receding away from Earth's frame of reference. Most of them are forever unreachable even if we could travel at the speed of light.

Something blueshifting means it's coming closer from Earth's frame of reference. In some cases, this could result in the galaxy colliding with ours, such as the hypothesized collision between the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way

Armchair expert here

From my understanding blue and red shifting is mostly related to movement. Like when a firetruck run past you with sirens on, you can hear change in pitch when compared it moving towards you vs away from you.
It's a similar effect with galaxies, red shifting means that after the light was emitted the space between us has increased and the light kind of stretched out to longer wave.

Now anyone with more knowledge on the subject, please correct me.