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'Humans hold a tenure on Earth' is not the way I like to look at it. It's not us who have a tenure on Earth. We're a product of Earth. Earth has us by the short and curlies rather.

Perhaps they only saw you when they looked.

Different observers will measure different shapes for anything that’s not a point particle. Nuclei in accelerators (such as the RHIC) will be more “pancake” than spherical, and this affects the charge distribution when modeling the interaction in the frame where the nucleus is moving. The claim is not wrong, but it doesn’t demonstrate the point they are claiming. I would go a step further and say that we can transform between frames, so the notion that it’s a “different location” is likely another manifestation of the fundamental misunderstanding of relativity. Transforming from (x,t) to (x’, t’) is an acknowledgment that it’s the same location, but each observer has their own coordinate system. The particle is not in two places at once. One person can say a location is 123 Main St while another describes it in terms of latitude and longitude. One location, two ways of describing it.

“Rittenhouse" by Portuguese illustrator Andre Carrilho

"We can't be certain of that." We actually can be certain of that. However, even if you contend we can't, it doesn't change the fact that if it is true, this explains gravity perfectly, in a way GR and quantum mechanics can't on their own. The question is not "why is the universe expanding" it is "why does the universe appear to expand"? Appearances are not reality. Imagine a capsule containing molten plasma, rocketed into space. Upon leaving the atmosphere, a small door on the side of the capsule is opened. What happens? The imbalance of energy between the capsule's interior and the vacuum of space results in a transfer of energy from the capsule to the vacuum. Imagine the same thing on an infinite scale. The pure vacuum (what scientists mistakenly refer to as the "heat death of the universe" which never occurs relative to observation) opposed to the pure singularity (infinite energy in a "place" of zero darkness) results in a transfer of energy from one to the other. But since there is infinite energy to "begin" with, there is always more where that came from.

To suggest the Universe has an "Ultimate Fate" is to impose our own understanding of cause and effect on the Universe itself. https://www.livescience.com/quantum-gravity-could-scramble-cause-and-effect.html General relativity says that the mass of a giant object can slow down time. This is well established as true and measurable; an astronaut orbiting Earth will experience time just a smidge faster than his or her twin back on the planet. What is the basic implication of this understanding? To impose an "age" on the Universe is idiotic. An astronaut orbiting the Earth experiences faster time, but that time still correlates to time on Earth. In other words, there is no Universal time, but there is a Universal present. Some sections of the Universe are older than others, just like an observer orbiting the Earth since its birth would be a different age than the Earth itself. A scientist on Earth can claim logically that the Earth is one age, while the observer would logically make a different claim. Each would be right from a relative point of view, but wrong from an objective point of view. When you acknowledge that the Universe has no discernible age, it leads you to some questions with disconcerting answers if you are a traditionalist. But the bottom line is the objective frame of reference is infinite light opposed to infinite darkness, and everything in between is relative.