Stars Remain In Their Usual Places; People Panic

asheller writes "The Star Tribune tells us the zodiac signs have shifted. Earth's wobble has shifted the signs, a new one's been added and many of us have changed signs. Formerly a Cancer, I've apparently been upgraded to Gemini and am now married to an Ophiuchus, a new sign. What's yor sign? The new Zodiac Chart is pretty interesting." Here are some priceless reactions to this celestial development. As long as the Chinese Zodiac is unaffected, I'll still be able to accurately judge people based on when they were born, so please indicate in comments your (new) sign and birth year animal, so we'll be able to know where you're coming from.

Comments

Re:This a re-org for the foreign offices only

[McTickles]

You could care less? so in fact you do care ?

I, however, salute your attempt to care less...

for the last time it is: "I could'NT care less"... meaning it is impossible for you to care even less about something

I could care less means that you care and could actually care less, someday...

But the ecliptic hasn't moved.

[Late Adopter]

The ecliptic from the Earth's perspective is constant (by definition), and the Sun's travel across the ecliptic is about as constant. Astrologers don't REALLY believe that constellations occupy precisely 30 degree chunks of the ecliptic, with Aries starting precisely at the vernal equinox. The constellations were just a conventional way to label those segments.

What's slightly more disconcerting about this article is that Astrology knew about this long long ago. They have a name for when a new constellation reaches the vernal equinox, it's the beginning of an "Age". You know, like the "Age of Aquarius"?

Astrology is a superstitious hobby of zero scientific merit, but even within its own formulation this article should have no impact on it.

Bad astronomy

[wizardforce]

I think that Bad Astronomy summed it up perfectly.

Re:really...

[Amorymeltzer]

Yup. Anyone who has taken a cursory glance at an astronomy or a biology or really any science book knows astrology is absurd. More than anything, I think this story is worthwhile for pointing out how big a place astrological signs and their "meaning" still have in our world. Hopefully this helps push it out.

In actuality, people have known this for millennia. The precession of Earth's axis has been known about since the Greeks, and is pretty basic astronomy. The wobble of our axis takes about 26,000 years to go around once, and since the current system has been around in some form for about 2,500 years, that means we've gone 1/10 of the way around. 12 signs, 10% off - that means most people change by one sign, and lo, so it is.

Additionally, constellations are not all the same size, so some should be much more common than others. More to the point, constellations do not form a perfectly connected circle, so many people are born technically between signs. What this means is that astrological signs are, at this point, completely dependent on a man-made calendrical system, which have changed throughout our history, sometimes radically.