Cosmological Apocalypse: Myths and Metaphors of the End in Contemporary Astronomy

Abstract

Discoveries in observational astronomy and extragalactic astrophysics made during the xxth and xxist centuries and the subsequent proliferation of the specialties and subspecialties found in contemporary astronomy –such as radio astronomy, planetary geology, astronometry or X-ray astronomy, among many others– have allowed both the survival of the myth and its continual renewal. The sensational discoveries made by contemporary astronomy has re-mythologized the cosmos, producing new myths both of the origins of the Universe and it’s end while remaining consistent with the cosmological tradition within which it falls. In this paper, I suggest that both eschatological cosmology and the cosmological apocalypse have introduced an (astronomical) reoccupation of myth and metaphor.