Why horoscopes are fake

The post also pointed out that the sun moves over a 13th constellation, which the Babylonians deigned not to include in the zodiac in order to preserve their month calendar. None of this is new information, points out Phil Plait of Slate Magazine.

He notes that astrologers have been ignoring the 13th constellation for thousands of years, and that sun actually passes through up to 21 constellations, by some counts. The origins of the zodiac come from a time when astronomers believed that the universe was geocentric, that is, that the heavens revolve around the Earth.

Early civilizations examined the stars in a search for patterns that could explain how everything worked. Many people ascribed meaning to patterns of stars in the sky, giving rise to the idea of constellations of stars that represented various aspects of their respective mythologies. As time went on, humans would chart the movements of these constellations and realize that there were predictable patterns in the night sky.

These predictions would form the backbone of both astronomy and astrology. The Ancient Babylonians divided the ancient sky into 12 pieces, each 30 degrees apart, which followed the sun as it supposedly traveled around the Earth over the course of a year.

Each piece was represented by a constellation within that degree arc of sky. The segments of the zodiac were an important early celestial coordinate system that provided early astronomers and astrologers with a more sophisticated understanding of the night sky. But as the heliocentric model took hold in Europe in the 17th century, astronomers abandoned the system. Astrologers stuck with the zodiac, holding on to the mystic notion that the movement of the stars could predict the future.

Naylor , who was tasked with predicting the future of Princess Margaret in England for the Sunday Express newspaper, according to Linda Rodriguez in an article for the Smithsonian. He continued to publish various astrological predictions about the royal family until he began to branch out into predictive advice for common folk whose birthday fell within the week of his column's publishing. Soon, "What the Stars Foretell" developed into the generalization-laden "star sign" predictions that remain popular to this day.

While most people tend to not take their astrological sign seriously, it is ubiquitous enough in popular culture. Birthstones and zodiac tattoos, for instance, are a perennially popular methods of body decoration that could be threatened by a shift in the constellations they evoke. NASA reassured its followers on Tumblr that while the zodiac signs are technically off because of Earth's shifting planetary axis, there's nothing "wrong" about their original signs, since astrology has no special predictive power anyway.

Already a subscriber? Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. Reading horoscopes is a popular diversion, but is there any science to suggest it means anything?

As many as 70 million Americans read their horoscopes daily. In , the General Social Survey found that 34 percent of Americans surveyed consider astrology to be "very" or "sort of scientific" and also reported a decrease—from two-thirds to around one-half—in the fraction of people who consider astrology " not at all scientific. Astrology is generally defined as the belief that astronomical phenomena, like the stars overhead when you were born or the fact that Mercury is in retrograde , have the power to influence the daily events in our lives and our personality traits.

This is, of course, very different from the study of astronomy, which is the scientific study of celestial objects, space, and the physics of the universe. Magazines like The Cut reported an increase of percent more hits on horoscope pages in than in Clearly, lots of people are looking for ways to interpret the stars for advice. Some expectations generated by astrology are so general that any outcome could be interpreted as fitting the expectations; if treated this way, astrology is not testable.

However, some have used astrology to generate very specific expectations that could be verified against outcomes in the natural world. For example, according to astrology, one's zodiac sign impacts one's ability to command respect and authority.

Since these traits are important in politics, we might expect that if astrology really explained people's personalities, scientists would be more likely to have zodiac signs that astrologers describe as "favorable" towards science. Relies on evidence? In the few cases where astrology has been used to generate testable expectations and the results were examined in a careful study, the evidence did not support the validity of astrological ideas.

However, one of the hallmarks of science is that ideas are modified when warranted by the evidence. Compare other star signs to yours. Notice how many of them will have a general statement that will, most likely, apply to your individual situation.

Nearly all daily newspaper horoscopes are not carefully constructed, or are in fact generated randomly. Notice the generalizations among those who practice or believe in astrology.

People interpret the same text in different ways to suit them best. Star signs tend to reflect generalizations about regular human behaviors. Study the common generalizations about the signs and try to guess the signs of people you may know. Then, compare their real sign to the one you believed them to have.

Are you correct? Part 2. Know a little bit about sun sign astrology. The most popular form of traditional Western astrology is sun sign astrology, the kind found in the horoscopes of many daily newspapers. If it were indeed accurate, its predictive value would be extremely high but, historically, that has not been the case, for societies following it would be using it in powerful ways, consistently, as that would be the true test.

Examine the following: A horoscope is an astrological forecast. The zodiac is divided into twelve zones of the sky, each named after the constellation that originally fell within its zone Taurus, Leo, etc.

The apparent paths of the sun, the moon, and the major planets all fall within the zodiac. Because of the precession of the equinoxes, the equinox and solstice points have each moved westward about 30 degrees in the last 2, years. Thus, the zodiacal constellations named in ancient times no longer correspond to the segments of the zodiac represented by their signs. In short, had you been born at the same time on the same day of the year 2, years ago, you would have been born under a different sign.

It is this fact of precession which has altered the very constellations from which masses "derive" their charts. Precession of the equinox is caused by the fact that the axis of the earth's rotation which causes day and night and the axis of the earth's revolution around the sun which marks the passage of each year are not parallel.

This tilt also causes our seasons, a fact that Ptolemy did understand but that many people do not understand even today. He deduced this from comparisons of data taken by the ancient Sumerians 2, years before his time. He did not understand what was pushing the precession, but he did understand the motion.

We now realize that the sun is rotating with a period of around 30 days and that this causes the sun to bulge at the equator, which causes a torque to be exerted on the top like motion of the earth's day and night cycle. There is also a small Part 3. Notice the paradoxes. The modern signs as listed here are further complicated when their boundaries are those of the current constellations.