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NASA wasn't trying to take on astrology as a whole. Merely its SpacePlace website, which is geared for kids, doesn't pull whatever punches. Information technology says, quite calmly, that at that place are actually thirteen constellations in the zodiac, but to make a "tidy lucifer" with their 12-calendar month year, the Babylonians picked the crappy one to exit out.

Ophiuchus, equally information technology turned out, was the weakest link, and so they struck it from the organization. Information technology's still right where it was in the sky. (Yous can meet it in the peak right corner of the paradigm above; that'southward the Milky Mode, and Ophiuchus is right along the ecliptic.) Furthermore, the Earth'south processional wobble most its axis means that the whole heaven has shifted a little, because World'southward rotational centrality doesn't point in the same direction it did but a few thousand years ago.

Rumors are flying, though, that NASA put out a "new zodiac" with new star sign dates. And the salt is real.

"We didn't change whatsoever zodiac signs, nosotros simply did the math," NASA spokesperson Dwayne Brown told Gizmodo in an electronic mail. "The Infinite Place commodity was about how astrology is not astronomy, how it was a relic of ancient history, and pointed out the science and math that did come from observations of the dark heaven." The Space Identify page goes even farther, bringing a footling table salt of their own: there's a guy in a button-downward at the acme of the page telling readers that "Astrology is Not Science!"

Image: NASA

Image: NASA

Nevertheless, the Minnesota Planetarium Society carefully calculated the new dates:

Capricorn: Jan twenty – Feb xvi
Aquarius: February xvi – March 11
Pisces: March 11 – April 18
Aries: Apr xviii – May 13
Taurus: May 13 – June 21
Gemini: June 21 – July 20
Cancer: July 20 – August 10
Leo: August 10 – September 16
Virgo: September 16 – October 14
Libra: Oct 14 – Nov 23
Scorpio: Nov 23 – November 29
Ophiuchus: November 29 – December 17
Sagittarius: December 17 – January twenty

Picking on astrology is fun because it's so easy. The mental gymnastics one has to go through to believe the thought that the positions of stars light-years away actually give us predictive power over the lives of private mortals based on nix simply their time and place of birth… it's on the order of homeopathy. It beggars credulity.

And yet astrology remains strangely compelling. Applying even the to the lowest degree fiddling bit of disquisitional thinking leads me to the conclusion that the arrangement of the planets at the time of my nativity is irrelevant to what I ought to focus on at work today. But I however identify with and cherish the idea that I'm a Leo. I'll even cop to having spent coin on Linda Goodman books, in the plural. Except… now, according to NASA's amended zodiac, I'grand a Cancer. The splinter in my brain is that it'south equally piece of cake to detect justification in my sense of self for the traits ascribed to Cancer — or Capricorn, or any of the other zodiac signs. The doublethink is also real.

Perhaps the lesson hither is that archetypes have value fifty-fifty if they don't take predictive ability. Systems like astrology, alchemy, and humoral theory all correspond a serial of attempts to sectionalization the world into understandable ideas — a handle, if y'all volition, a schema by which to approach people or bug. Horoscopes brand people feel like they've got a scrap of management, which tin can be the difference between a practiced solar day and a bad one. Perhaps in that location is something to the thought that being born at dissimilar times in the cycle of the year could atomic number 82 to different development. But that has exactly nothing to do with the stars and planets, either. As we evolve our thinking past these starting time attempts to understand our cosmos, I'1000 again reminded of Isaac Asimov'southward comments on the relativity of incorrect.

Either way, balance assured: NASA has not adult a sudden involvement in astrology.

Featured image by Stéphane Guisard, via the ESO