New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy Latest news update about;New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy;An astrological controversy erupted online Thursday after a newspaper article erroneously suggested that the dates that determine the Zodiac signs had shifted by about a month, throwing millions of believers into self-doubt and panic.
Fear not: your sign remains the same.
PHOTOS: New Zodiac Signs?
The tilt of the Earth's axis has gradually shifted since the ancient times when the Babylonians determined the dates of the Zodiac. The calendrical rejiggering also supposedly re-introduced a sign discarded by the Babylonians: Ophiuchus, alternatively called the much-cooler sounding Serpentarius.New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy
Under this calculus your correspondent, an erstwhile Aquarius, is now a Capricorn.
Twitter, predictably, exploded with outrage and irony. One user, @pnuts_mama, tweeted, "New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy it's our identity!! ahh!! existential crisis!! postmodernism defined!!" Time magazine's television critic James Poniewozik joked, "I'm not a Cancer? Suddenly all those bigoted anti-Gemini pamphlets I self-published look embarrassing."
But astrologers and astronomers -- two groups that don't always see eye-to-eye -- agree that this is old news. About 3,000 years old. Western astrologers included the wobble of the Earth's axis in their calculations centuries ago. The Zodiac we are all familiar with is still perfectly valid (as valid, anyway, as the Zodiac ever was).
"Astronomers have known about this since 130 BC. Hipparchus was able to determine that this would happen," says Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society. "It astounds me that this has taken off the way it has in the last day or two."New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy
Fear not: your sign remains the same.
PHOTOS: New Zodiac Signs?
The tilt of the Earth's axis has gradually shifted since the ancient times when the Babylonians determined the dates of the Zodiac. The calendrical rejiggering also supposedly re-introduced a sign discarded by the Babylonians: Ophiuchus, alternatively called the much-cooler sounding Serpentarius.New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy
Under this calculus your correspondent, an erstwhile Aquarius, is now a Capricorn.
Twitter, predictably, exploded with outrage and irony. One user, @pnuts_mama, tweeted, "New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy it's our identity!! ahh!! existential crisis!! postmodernism defined!!" Time magazine's television critic James Poniewozik joked, "I'm not a Cancer? Suddenly all those bigoted anti-Gemini pamphlets I self-published look embarrassing."
But astrologers and astronomers -- two groups that don't always see eye-to-eye -- agree that this is old news. About 3,000 years old. Western astrologers included the wobble of the Earth's axis in their calculations centuries ago. The Zodiac we are all familiar with is still perfectly valid (as valid, anyway, as the Zodiac ever was).
"Astronomers have known about this since 130 BC. Hipparchus was able to determine that this would happen," says Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society. "It astounds me that this has taken off the way it has in the last day or two."New Zodiac Signs 2011: Debunking a Zodiac Controversy
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