Stargazing Guy

― Arthur C. Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008)

Science fiction author, futurist, sceptic, science proponent and all-round quotable guy – but did he say this?

QI isn’t sure!

Whether he said it or not, is not the issue. It’s whether astrology is true or not – and how people react, behave and treat those that believe.

Stargazing Guy is a non-believer in astrology. I worry that belief in the pseudo-sciences (of which astrology is the front-runner) undermines our modern scientific and technical civilisation and isn’t a harmless hobby. As an artificial human construct, that has no bearing on reality, astrology can easily be shown as wrong – not just wrong but nonsensical.

We all know there are 12 zodiac constellations – we would normally call them our star signs.

The 12 astrological zodiac constellations are evenly spread across the calendar – and the date of your birth is meant to have an impact on your personality, behaviours, love life, career, etc. – every newspaper carries a horoscope trying to predict your destiny!

But it’s possible that the star sign you think you are, is not true!

When you actually look at the sky you may note something funny – here are the astronomical zodiac signs.

As you can see there are 13 (Ophiuchus is pronounced oh-phi-cuss) – and also the constellations aren’t spread evenly.

So any Sagittarians (22 Nov-21 Dec – according to astrologers) out there may actually be Ophiucuns – never seen a prediction for them!

So what’s happened? Why are the traditional star signs all out of whack?

It’s partly because the star signs were rounded down to 12—omitting Ophiuchus—and then rounded-up to each cover a month.

But there’s something big that’s happened since Babylonian times.

The Earth has moved.

Earth has precessed in the last 3,000 years, which is when the astrological star signs were codified by the Babylonians that lived in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq and Syria.

Precession is a natural process lasting 25,800 years that sees Earth wobble on its axis—rather like a spinning top—because of the Moon’s gravitational influence. The result is that the “North Star” constantly changes.

Credit

So on your birthday the Sun very probably is not in the same star sign that traditional astrology says it is

So next time someone reads your horoscope or says “typical Capricorn!” you can know, for sure, that they’re talking complete gibberish. Because as well as giving meaning to alignments—which makes no sense—their alignments are 3,000 years out of date.

Credit for opening image

PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.