Sorry. Your zodiac sign is wrong.
If you ask an astronomer which sign are you? You'd probably make him run away immediately.
Why?
Because that question is telling him that you probably believe in...horoscope and astrology.
And an astronomer knows there's no way stars and planets can influence our lives.
Why? Just...astrology
is very different from astronomy. Stars are nothing but gas balls that
burn hydrogen and helium, and eventually die, forming other stars or black holes.
Over time, someone has tried to give some sense to some stars pattern,
and every culture had its constellations. For example, the Chinese constellation for Bull
(Taurus) is an Ox, and the one for the Twins (Gemini) is a Tiger.
Of course, nowadays we all agree on the name we give to constellations, no matter which country
are you and which is your cultural background. Now, we see stars projected on a two-dimensional
sphere (the sky), but they are instead distributed in a 3d space,
which is to say that, for example, stars in the Ursa Major constellation are light years apart
in “depth” and they're not lying on the same bidimensional plane: this is pretty obvious.
But there is one more thing to say: your zodiacal sign is wrong.
Why?
The answer to this question is, simply, Earth's axis precession.
But if we want o understand it better, we should take a step back to 1894 bc, because the zodiac
was invented by Babylonians around that date. The Babylonians lived in Babylon, one of the most
famous ancient Mesopotamian cities, which is roughly where modern-day Iraq is.
The Babylonians were known to have mapped out the fixed stars and various constellations.
Names were given to the constellations and prior to specific zodiac signs,’
the seeming planetary movement through each constellation appeared to hold significance.
The Babylonians followed a 12-month calendar, so they assigned each month a zodiac sign.
According to earthsky.com, Over the course of a year,
the sun appears to be in front of, or ‘in’, different constellations,
one month, the sun appears in Gemini; the next month, in Cancer. The dates listed
in the newspaper’s horoscope identify when the sun appears in a particular astrological sign.
The modern zodiac signs are a direct result of the beliefs and observations of the Babylonians, who
lived over 4,000 years ago, which goes to show the role that zodiac signs have had in world history.
Below is a list of the zodiac signs, and the dates that correspond with each sign.
Then Greeks and Romans started looking at the stars and using pretty the same zodiac signs.
And then the world spread into the world. So here we are today, saying that who's
born in June is a “Gemini”. But since Babylonians, we
also made steps forward on the road of science. What did science say to us about the Earth's axis?
In compiling his famous star catalogue (completed in 129 BCE), the Greek astronomer Hipparchus
noticed that the positions of the stars were shifted in a systematic way from earlier
Babylonian (Chaldean) measures. This indicated that it was not the stars that were moving but
rather the observing platform—Earth. Such a motion is called precession and consists of
a cyclic wobbling in the orientation of Earth’s axis of rotation with a period of 25,772 years.
Well, we know pretty well today that it precesses around the ecliptic plane's axis.
What does it mean? In physics,
precession is the change in the direction of the rotation axis of a body in rotary motion.
In other words, if a body's axis of rotation is rotating around a second axis,
that body is said to be in precession with respect to the second axis.
This means that, as time passes by, the Earth's axis will point out different portion of the sky
in the same period of the year. This also means that, as time passes by, we will see a
different portion of the night sky (and different constellations) in the same period of the year.
Eventually, after some 26.000 years, the axis will return to its original position.
So the thing is: some time is passed since Babylonians invented astrology. This means that,
while they were in the Gemini constellation in June, we are no more in the Gemini constellation
because, due to the precession, the Earth's axis points at the Taurus constellation in June.
As you can notice if you are familiar with zodiac signs, we don't “belong”, scientifically speaking,
to the zodiac sign we thought. All of them are currently shifted,
due to precession, for about a month. Let's be clear.
You're not a Leo: you're cancer! And you're not a Libra: you're a Virgo!
Amazing, isn't it?
But why does Earth's axis precess?
Because the Earth’s equator is tilted with respect to the orbital plane of the Earth around the sun,
the so-called Ecliptic plane, the Earth’s equatorial bulge is also tilted with respect
to the plane along which the Sun and Moon travel. The moon and the sun exert gravitational “tug” on
the Earth’s equatorial bulge, trying to pull the Earth’s equatorial region to be aligned with the
Ecliptic plane. This tug along with the rotational motion of the Earth on its axis, the revolution
of the Earth around the sun and the revolution of the Moon about the Earth cause the Earth to
wobble about its axis of rotation similar to the motion of spinning. Hence the axis of the Earth
undergoes precession due to a combination of the Earth’s non-spherical shape and the gravitational
tidal forces of the Moon and Sun applying torque as they attempt to pull the equatorial
‘bulge’ into the plane of the ecliptic. The precession of the Earth's axis has a number of
observable effects. First, the positions of the south and north celestial poles appear to move
in circles against the space-fixed backdrop of stars, completing one circuit in approximately
26,000 years. Thus, while today the star Polaris lies approximately at the north celestial pole,
this will change over time, and other stars will become the "north star".
The previous pole star was Kochab (Beta Ursae Minoris, β UMi, β Ursae Minoris), the brightest
star in the bowl of the "Little Dipper", located 16 degrees from Polaris. It held that role from
1500 BC to AD 500.] It was not quite as accurate in its day as Polaris is today. Today,
Kochab and its neighbour Pherkad are referred to as the "Guardians of the Pole" (meaning Polaris).
On the other hand, Thuban in the constellation Draco,
which was the pole star in 3000 BC, is much less conspicuous at magnitude 3.67
(one-fifth as bright as Polaris); today it is invisible in light-polluted urban skies.
When Polaris becomes the north star again around 27,800, it will then be farther away from the
pole than it is now due to its proper motion, while in 23,600 BC it came closer to the pole.
It is more difficult to find the south celestial pole in the sky at this moment,
as that area is a particularly bland portion of the sky, and the nominal south pole star is
Sigma Octantis, which with magnitude 5.5 is barely visible to the naked eye even under
ideal conditions. That will change from the 80th to the 90th centuries, however, when the south
celestial pole travels through the False Cross. This situation also is seen on a star map.
The orientation of the south pole is moving toward the Southern Cross constellation.
For the last 2,000 years or so, the Southern Cross has pointed to the south celestial pole.
As a consequence, the constellation is difficult to view from subtropical northern latitudes,
unlike how it was in the time of the ancient Greeks. The Southern Cross can be viewed from
as far north as Miami (about 25N), but only during the winter/early spring.
In approximately 3,200 years, the star Gamma Cephei in the Cepheus constellation
will succeed Polaris for this position. The south celestial pole currently lacks
a bright star to mark its position, but over time precession also will cause bright stars to become
south stars. As the celestial poles shift, there is a corresponding gradual shift in the
apparent orientation of the whole star field, as viewed from a particular position on Earth.
For identical reasons, the apparent position of the Sun relative to the backdrop of the stars at
some seasonally fixed time slowly regresses a full 360° through all twelve traditional constellations
of the zodiac, at the rate of about 50.3 seconds of arc per year, or 1 degree every 71.6 years.
Why the name precession?
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"Precession" and "procession" are both terms that relate to motion.
"Precession" is derived from the Latin praecedere ("to precede, to come before or earlier"),
while "procession" is derived from the Latin procedere ("to march forward, to advance").
Generally, the term "procession" is used to describe a group of objects moving forward.
The stars viewed from Earth are seen to proceed from east to west daily,
due to the Earth's diurnal motion, and yearly, due to the Earth's revolution around the Sun. At the
same time, the stars can be observed to anticipate slightly such motion, at the rate of approximately
50 arc seconds per year, a phenomenon known as the "precession of the equinoxes".
Now that we've explained why your zodiacal sign is wrong, you may ask the question:
So why do some people still believe in astrology?
Why do people continue to believe in this pseudoscience?
According to psychologists, there are several reasons.
Human beings constantly seek narratives to help weave their past, present, and future together
through their goals and expectations — and that’s where astrology comes in.
Astrology helps create and validate the concept of self for some, and there are thousands of websites
on the internet, which cater to just that through their listicles on personality traits
attributable to different sun signs. Moreover, astrology also imparts a sense of belonging.
It allows you to see yourself as part of the world: “Here’s where I fit in, oh, I’m Gemini”.
Studies also show that people often turn to astrology in response to stress
and anxiety. “Under conditions of high stress, the individual is prepared to use astrology as
a coping device even though under low-stress conditions he does not believe in it,”
Graham Tyson, Professor of Psychology at the South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, said.
Another major reason that propels people towards astrology is
uncertainty. Studies have shown that we find not knowing what could happen
even more stressful than knowing that something bad is definitely going to happen.
Through its predictions, the astrological framework helps human beings achieve the
certainties they crave for. “If they’re going through a time of disruption, they suddenly start
to take what’s written about their sign much more seriously,” astrologer Jonathan Cainer, who writes
horoscope columns for The Daily Mail, said. But, besides the big picture uncertainties,
astrology also helps some people deal with their day-to-day anxieties and
helps inspire a sense of control. Sometimes, Astrology can give us an
irrational kind of hope that when we read that a positive change is going to happen in our life
it actually will, reinforcing a sense of control in the future.
"This video ends here! Thanks for watching everyone! What do you think about astrology?
Are you taking it seriously or not? Let us know in the comments below!