The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved (2015) s02e05 Episode Script
Predicting the Future
1 Astrology, the celestial movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets among the stars, governing our personality and destiny.
Astrology is not just based out of something in the thin air.
It's a celestial fingerprint for somebody.
For centuries, millions of people, from paupers to powerful world leaders, have relied on the ancient system for answers.
Mrs.
Reagan had actually hired an astrologer to guide the schedule of the President.
But is there any proof astrology actually works? Astrological predictions are just guesswork.
Astrology has been fighting a cosmic battle for centuries.
Is it a science or merely a superstition? Ancient mysteries shrouded in the shadows of time.
Now can they finally be solved by looking to the heavens? The truth is up there, hidden among the stars, in a place we call The Universe.
Astrology, an ancient system based on the idea that celestial phenomena in the universe have a direct effect on human lives on earth.
Yet for centuries, the public has been mixing up astrology with astronomy.
I am an Aquarius, so why should I care? I'm a scientist, right? However, I do realize, watching my students, that astrology is a great way to break the ice at a party.
The first thing you ask a date is "what's your sign?" But is there any scientific basis behind astrology? And how is it different from astronomy? Astronomy has its real origins in astrology because the first astronomers were actually the astrologers.
To understand this, we have to travel back to the Babylonians, who lived in what is now Iraq, during the second millennium B.
C.
There, a select class of sky-watchers viewed the mysterious heavens as a gigantic projection screen.
They formed stories surrounding ominous celestial objects that they believed were mighty gods controlling life on earth.
In ancient times, when we didn't understand what those objects were up in the sky, there were some people who began to keep track of them and try and relate those, perhaps, godlike beings to everyday lives here on earth.
People observing the heavens immediately noticed that there was a daily rhythm to the sky.
That rhythm was that everything rose in the east and set in the west, on a daily cycle.
But over the years, ancient people noticed that there were seven objects in the sky that had a motion separate from that daily rising and setting.
The seven objects were the Sun, Moon, and the five planets visible to the human eye.
Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Mercury.
The early astrologers created the seven days of the week based on these celestial bodies.
And this began the Babylonian Era, when they were tracking and charting cycles of time.
So with this first form of astrology, it was more about fate and destiny, and looking at the gods in the sky to see how they could best survive the cycles of time that they were in.
Astrology quickly spread throughout Asia and Europe.
By the 4th century B.
C.
, Greek astrologers made a big discovery.
The Sun moved across a pattern of stars in a restricted narrow path, which is now known to scientists as the ecliptic.
Now you can imagine the Sun projected against the stars over the course of the year, and you can't see those stars because it's daytime, but they're there.
And the path that the Sun makes over the course of the year, among the stars, that is the path of the ecliptic.
The ancient astrologers divided the ecliptic band into 12 equal parts based on 12 collections, or patterns of stars, known as constellations.
They noticed that some of these constellations vaguely resembled animals and named them accordingly.
There was a pattern of stars that we call Leo today, that looked like a lion.
There was one, which looked like a bull, which we, today, call Taurus.
Now today we call a place that has a number of animals in it a zoo.
And from that same root word, they got the word "zoodaic" or zodiac.
We call them constellations, they call them signs, through which the seven gods travel.
If you look at the constellations, they don't really look like a bull or a ram, necessarily.
But they were really projecting their interior psychic perspective out onto these stars through their myths and stories, and then trying to make sense of their lives and how they lived.
For thousands of years, people used astrology to make decisions about when to hunt, harvest, or wage war.
Many kings, queens, and emperors relied on astrologers for virtually every move they made.
And of course, the kings and queens of old, they were very superstitious.
They realized that if they make the wrong turn, I mean, someone's gonna take over the throne.
And they tried to use the Sun and the stars as a way to predict the future.
But in the 17th Century, astrology came under scrutiny.
Based on observations made by others, Astrologer and physicist, Johannes Kepler, proposed the three laws of planetary motion to describe how the planets orbit the Sun.
Kepler's laws helped to usher in a new science called astronomy.
However, he, and many other scientists, continued to practice astrology.
Thousands of years ago, we didn't have NASA.
We didn't have the National Science Foundation.
Kepler, Johannes Kepler, one of the greatest early astronomers, made his living by being an astrologer.
And so all the great astronomers of old, let's face it, they made pocket money by being on the payroll of a superstitious king or queen who wanted to know, "what is your sign?" But the invention of the telescope, in the early 1600s, overturned the ancient view of the universe, and challenged the very basis of astrology.
Astronomers began to realize that stars that made up the 12 constellations are not twinkling dots imbedded in a flat background, but are actually distant suns at very different distances from Earth, and from each other.
Turn it on.
We're setting up lights in this field to form one of the most recognizable images in the night sky.
Behind me, is a replica of the Big Dipper.
Like the real the real Big Dipper, this appears to be a two-dimensional, or flat, pattern of lights against the sky.
However, these stars are actually not close to each other in space.
But are, in fact, different distances, both from our earth and from one another.
If we could see our Big Dipper from any other point in the universe, what we would see is that the familiar pattern of stars that we know so well disappears.
And instead, the stars become randomly oriented next to one another in the sky.
The Big Dipper isn't even a constellation.
It's an asterism.
A smaller pattern of stars within a much bigger constellation named Ursa Major.
And Ursa Major isn't even included in the constellations that make up the astrological zodiac.
Astronomers soon realized there could be endless numbers of constellations depending on your point of reference in the universe.
Constellations are completely made up.
There's no reality to them.
Different civilizations assigned different star patterns different names.
This is very much like playing Connect the Dots.
The International Astronomical Union would eventually agree on an official set of constellations, which are simply artificial aids to help study the stars of the universe.
By the 18th Century, astrology and astronomy became completely separate disciplines.
And scientists stripped all forms of spiritualism from the scientific study of the stars.
Astrology and astronomy seemed to part ways during the Enlightenment period.
And it was the same period that the movement of the planets was simply just the movement of the planets, and not the movement of, also, psychological influences.
But many remain convinced that astrology determines people's personalities.
So what happens when we challenge two astrologers to do an astrological reading on one of the 20th Century's most famous people without revealing his name.
Just when and where he was born.
Astrology, an ancient tradition that proclaims the stars, Sun, Moon, and planets are guardians of our strengths, ambitions, and destiny.
But after thousands of years of existence, astrology suffered a decline, as the Western world turned to astronomy for a scientific study of the universe.
The two disciplines diverged, with astronomy becoming strictly about the observations of the heavens and their predictions made through physical laws whereas astrology continued to be the predictions of the lives of individuals based on the apparent positions of astronomical objects in the sky.
In the 1930s, astrology experienced a sudden resurgence with the introduction of daily horoscope columns in newspapers.
They provided brief forecasts of a person's day based on their Sun sign, or the position of the Sun at the moment of their birth as it passed through the 12 constellations of the zodiac.
The daily horoscopes quickly gained popularity and helped to sell newspapers.
But were they peddling a false bill of goods? If you think about it, what that implies is that 1/12 of the world will be having the same kind of day.
If you divide the entire world into 12 groups by the date that they happen to be born, then 1/12 of the world would be having the same kind of day.
Now what are the odds that 1/12 of the world's population, about 500 million people, are having nearly the same type of day? Moreover, all of the predictions are pretty vague and general.
You can find aspects that seem to pertain to the day that you're having.
Even astrologers admit that daily newspaper horoscopes are far too simplistic.
When astronomers reduce astrology just to a Sun sign understanding to debunk it, they're really missing the complexity of the actual birth chart that every individual has.
Astrologers say a true horoscope is a personal birth, or natal chart.
A cosmic map that considers the influence of, not only the Sun, but also the Moon, and the planets at the exact date, time, and place of birth of a specific person.
I do think the horoscope is absolutely scientific.
It's something that charts exactly where everything was in the sky at that exact moment for that particular person when they were born.
And what that sets off is this clock of destiny that the horoscope speaks to.
So it's a dynamic, empirical tool to see when are you scheduled, in your life, to have certain shifts and transformations.
I mean, these things are about fate and destiny.
To test the accuracy of the horoscope, two well-respected astrologers are provided the date, time, and location of birth, of an anonymous person from history, in order to create a birth chart.
So as astrologers, we used to have to use lots of calculations and table to create birth charts.
Now we're able to generate charts with computers and programs.
What we need are three primary things to create any birth chart.
We need somebody's birthdate, and this person's birthdate is May 29, 1917.
And then, we also need exact birth time.
So 3:00 P.
M.
And then this person was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
I entered all the information and it created this chart, which is blown up and represented here.
A birth chart positions the signs in the 12 houses, or constellations, and the Sun, Moon, and planets, at their rightful celestial longitudes.
The astrologer then analyzes the aspects, or angles, the planets make to each other, in order to get a reading of the person.
So for this particular person, we have a rising sign of Libra.
The Sun sign, over here, is in Gemini.
And the Moon, over here, in the 11th house, is in Virgo.
I see that the Sun in Gemini is in the 8th house here.
Gemini is the sign of being a teacher, a communicator, orator.
This person comes in with a real strong desire to serve.
Whoever this person was probably had an incredible ability to orate and speak about whatever he or she was passionate about.
There is another indicator here.
In a relationship that we call The Grand Trine which exists between the Moon, Mars, and what we call the North Node.
This suggests that it would be his or her destiny to be in the public eye.
This is a person with potentially very great vision and lots of dreams.
The astrologers seem to provide similar readings of the mystery person We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things.
Who happens to be the late president John F.
Kennedy.
But were these readings based on science or sheer luck? Would most presidents who were strong orators have similar charts? Different astrologers make different predictions, and as far as anyone can see, from a serious study of the predictions, they are really not matched by the observable facts.
There's no statistically significant study that shows that astrological predictions are any better than just guesswork.
Despite skepticism amongst scientists, many people have relied on astrology to make crucial decisions that affected millions if lives.
During World War II, Adolf Hitler secretly employed an astrologer, who was later imprisoned when predicting Germany would lose the North African campaign.
British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, also sought advice from an astrologer.
As did former Russian president, Boris Yelstin.
During the 1980s, the Reagan Administration allowed the daily affairs of the White House to be strictly managed by an astrologer.
Mrs.
Reagan thought that election years ending with a zero were bad luck.
President Kennedy had been elected in 1960.
He had died in Office.
President Roosevelt, who was elected in 1940, died in Office.
So she was very concerned that President Reagan had been elected in 1980.
And in his first term, there was a very serious assassination attempt.
President Reagan.
And what happened is that the Chief of Staff of the White House then had a color code on each day of the calendar.
And the color code told them what was okay to do that day, what was not okay.
And they postponed meeting so the President wouldn't fly on the astrologically unapproved days.
The Reagans were hardly alone.
By the 1980s, an estimated 50 million Americans claimed to know their astrological signs, and followed their daily horoscope.
But then, the scientific community responded with a bombshell that questioned astrology very foundation.
Was everyone's zodiac sign completely wrong? ogy seems like a science with math, complicated diagrams, and a specialized vocabulary.
But can it actually unlock the secrets of your destiny? Scientists claim there's a celestial phenomenon that throws the entire astrological zodiac into question.
The early astrologers had observed the Sun spending about a month in each of the 12 signs of the zodiac over the course of one year.
But there's one crucial thing that the ancient sky-watchers did not know.
Due to gravitational tugs by the Moon and the Sun, the Earth's axis of rotation slowly wobbles.
This wobble is called precession.
To illustrate precession, here, I've got spinning gyroscope, which represents the spinning Earth.
And you can see that its axis is tilted a little bit, and gravity is trying to topple it over.
But instead of falling over, the gyroscope precesses.
It rotates around an axis that goes through the pivot point.
In the same way, Earth's axis of rotation is describing a conical path, which leads to precession of the equinoxes.
It takes 26,000 years for the precession of the Earth's axis to complete one cycle.
As a result, in the more than 2,000 years since the Western horoscope was created, Earth's slow wobble has caused the Sun's position to lag behind by about a month.
This has surprising implications for astrology.
Because that precession of the Earth's axis is roughly every 26,000 years, that translates into, every 2,000 years, those 12 constellations have lagged by a whole constellation.
So that means that every 2,000 years, if your astrology doesn't take that into account, you'll be a whole star sign out in your astrological predictions.
This would mean everyone has been reading the wrong horoscope.
Your astrological sign would actually be the one that precedes your birth month.
So for example, most people born in late March and early April, who think they're Pisces, are actually Aquarius.
At least as far as the Sun's position is concerned.
How do Western astrologers get around the dilemma caused by precession? The answer is they ignore the actual position of the stars.
Instead, they divide the year into four seasons, and say that the period they call Aries starts at the moment of the spring, or vernal equinox.
The Cancer begins at the moment of the summer solstice.
Libra start at the autumnal equinox.
And Capricorn, at the winter solstice.
In Western astrology, we're not looking at it in terms of the background stars in the constellations.
As far as the signs in the horoscope goes, it is based on the movement of our own planet and the equinoxes.
But since this new form of astrology ignores the actual position of the constellations, critics say it undermines the whole basis of the ancient system.
I don't see how that can work because the characteristics that astrologers assign to some of the signs have to do with what the constellations look like.
So the Pisces sign is associated with water because fish swim in water.
So you can't then, suddenly, decide that the constellations and the signs have nothing to do with each other.
Modern astrologers insist, the real life force of astrology exists within the planets of our solar system.
The word, planet, for an astrologer doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it does for an astronomer.
We use the word in the vein that the Greeks meant it.
In the way that the planet literally means "wanderer.
" So for an astrologer, anything that moves against the background stars is a planet.
So the Sun is not a planet, technically, but we call it a planet.
Astrology is not just based out of something in the thin air.
It's based out of actual configurations of planets, their relationships to each other, to create a map.
A celestial fingerprint, or a sense of destiny for somebody, in terms of the life they're living and its timing.
One astrological phrase that's mentioned a lot in astrology is, "Mercury in retrograde.
" We've heard people describe it as a bad omen.
A time when one shouldn't make big decisions.
Or they blame bad decisions, or actions, on the movement of the tiniest planet in our solar system.
But what does retrograde really mean? Retrograde is the apparent movement of a planet, seen from Earth, in the opposite direction of other bodies in the solar system when observed from a particular vantage point.
It's caused by the different rates of speed at which a planet travels around the Sun.
Mercury, being the closest, according to the laws of Newton, traveled faster because it's closer to the Sun.
And, therefore, as the Earth and Mercury go around the Sun, Mercury seems to go backwards.
And so we have this optical illusion.
Forward can go backwards.
This illusion is something we can easily see in our everyday lives.
Suppose you have two cars going along a highway.
But one car is moving faster than the other.
As it's passing the slower car, the slower car appears to be moving backward.
It's not really moving backward.
But it appears to be moving backward from the perspective of the faster car.
In the same way, Mercury only appears to move backward for a while.
But both Earth and Mercury continue to move forward in their orbits around the Sun.
Mercury has three retrograde periods per year.
Each lasting about three weeks.
Astrologers claim that certain people are sensitive to this celestial phenomenon.
Mercury is the planet that affects communication, short-range travel.
So when it goes backwards, it means that those things are having a more difficult time moving forward, So during Mercury in retrograde, you want to be careful to start any new contracts.
You want to, probably, plan some extra time for travel.
This tends to be a time of plane delays.
And you also want to be very careful and mindful of your speech and communication.
Particularly through technology.
Whether Mercury, or any other planet, is in retrograde motion, or the normal prograde motion, should have no effect, whatsoever, on how our day goes, or our well-being, or our futures, or our careers.
Scientists insist that astrology must be wrong.
But is it possible that the ancient system is actually driven by a known fundamental force in the universe? Astrology.
Some believe it's a cosmic blueprint for life.
But is there any evidence of a force that empowers the planets, Sun, and Moon, to affect human behavior and destiny at the moment of birth? A lot of astrology talks about how crucial it is to know, at time of birth, what was going on in the night sky.
That implies that there's some sort of mechanism connecting the motion of celestial objects to influences on someone at birth.
But what kind of mechanism? According to the law of physics, there are four fundamental forces of nature by which particles, or planets, can interact with each other.
They are gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force.
Scientists argue that if astrology has any basis in reality, it needs to rest on one of these four basic forces.
But is there any evidence it does? Gravity, which is one of the most fundamental forces in the universe, is the pull of all stuff on all other stuff.
Every piece of matter in the universe attracts every other piece of matter.
And so we, the Earth, are pulled into orbit around the Sun.
We, in turn, pull the Moon into orbit around the Earth.
So could gravity be the source by which celestial objects affect humans on Earth? The gravity of an object depends on two things.
How much mass it has.
And how far away it is The more massive an object is, the stronger its gravity.
Yet the closer it is, the more its gravity affects you.
A way of thinking about that is to imagine that my voice is accompanied by several other voices.
And so what's actually going to happen is that it's gonna be very hard for you to hear me.
I'm gonna have to raise my voice.
But if they start moving away, then the effects of their voices, even though there are many more of them than my voice, will actually get weaker, and produce a much less significant effect than just me standing here talking to you.
That's very much like a planet being far away.
Even though it's very massive, its effects are very weak, compared to effects locally that may be much stronger.
Mars is the closest planet to Earth.
But does it have a measurable gravitational effect on a human at the moment of birth? Regardless of the position of Mars in the sky, its gravitational effect on the baby is much less than that of the doctor delivering the baby.
The doctor has a lot less mass, but the doctor is much, much closer than Mars.
And so the gravitational effect is much greater.
Gravity can't be the physical mechanism that governs astrology.
But could astrology be linked to another force of nature? Electromagnetism.
It's the force that acts between electrically charged particles, producing electricity, magnetism, and light.
Electromagnetism affects a lot of what's going on here on Earth, in terms of how we broadcast radio signals, how things are attracted to each other, how things bump into each other.
That's all controlled by the electromagnetic force.
The Moon, planets, and even the human body, are composed of electrically charged particles, like electrons and protons that make up atoms.
But positive protons and negative electrons cancel each other out and make the atoms electrically neutral.
Electromagnetic forces shouldn't influence people in their daily lives or at the moment of birth, because between electrically neutral bodies, there's essentially no electromagnetic interaction.
Now Earth is neutral, the planets are neutral, there should be no electromagnetic interactions among them.
What about the two remaining fundamental forces of nature? The weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force? The strongest of all the known forces.
It's the glue that hold together atomic nuclei, which all living things are made of.
The strong and weak nuclear forces are influential only over extremely tiny distances the sizes of sub-atomic particles.
There should be no effect whatsoever, in terms of the nuclear forces, between the planets, at the time of birth, and the baby.
Astrology doesn't appear to be linked to any detectable force.
But could the ancient system be governed by one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe? Astrology.
An ancient tradition that links the patterns of our solar system with the patterns of our lives.
But what force in the universe could enable the positions and motions of the planets and stars to affect us here on Earth.
None of the four known forces of nature appear to be the smoking gun.
But could modern science have missed something? Could astrology be governed by a mysterious, undetectable force in our universe? Science can't even tell us what consciousness is, but we know it's there.
So it's very similar to astrology.
We can interpret them and share the influences with people, but we don't exactly know how it works.
Unlike the known forces of nature, astrologers theorize that this unknown force that governs astrology is completely independent of distance.
Meaning the Sun, Moon, and all the planets in our solar system have an equal effect on humans on Earth.
Given that no experiment shows the force that astrology's using, that the force doesn't follow any of the known laws of science, I think the simplest hypothesis is that there is no such force.
Scientists assert that astrology hasn't kept up with the times.
There are thousands of newly discovered objects and phenomenon in the universe that are pushing the boundaries of astronomy, and testing the legitimacy of astrology.
Sagittarius, the 15th largest constellation, is thought to loosely resemble an archer, half-man, half-horse, drawing his bow.
Astrology claims that people born under this sign are energetic and enthusiastic.
But scientists discovered one of the most exotic things within the constellation.
A black hole.
A super massive object with such powerful gravity that nothing can escape from it, including light.
The cosmic beast swallows gigantic volumes of gas, and dust, and anything else that gets near it.
But does it have any effect on humans here on Earth? In the constellation, Sagittarius, 26,000 light-years away, is the center of our galaxy.
And we've discovered that there's a giant black hole, 4 million times as massive as the Sun, right there, in the middle of our galaxy.
That's really neat but it has nothing to do with any physical effect on our lives, in terms of what careers we should have, what people we should date, what kind of a day we're gonna have.
According to astrology, the constellation, Cancer, symbolizes a crab.
Those born under the sign are said to be maternal homebodies.
But scientists have recently made a big discovery.
The constellation is home to solar systems containing planets resembling Earth.
Part of the reason the discovery of extra solar planets is so exciting, is that we might be seeing planets that are potentially like our own Earth.
Planets that received enough light from their star, that they could warm enough to have liquid water.
And hopefully, with liquid water, the chances to be host for life.
But none of these things are included in astrology at all.
Astrologers acknowledge all the new scientific discoveries but claim that the most important astrological influences exist in our own solar system, not the universe at large.
The reality is that if we were to incorporate all of the new discoveries, we would have an overwhelming body of things to consider.
So we have to play triage a little bit and narrow it down to the things that seem to have the most important and influential effects on us.
I think you can lose the forest for the trees if you get too crazy, and go too far out, and start to look at too many variable pieces.
What's most important is just to take in this little space that we're all involved with, within the solar system, and understand your place in it.
Despite the lack of hard evidence, many people still swear by astrology when making the most important decisions of their lives.
So what happens when scientists take the biggest claim in all of astrology and put it to the test? Astrology and astronomy have been engaged in a cosmic rift for centuries.
Astrologers claim their system is scientific.
Astronomers, on the other hand, dismiss it as a superstition.
However, in order to be fair and accurate, the scientific community decided it was time to test astrology themselves.
When scientists or educators have asked astrologers for proof that their system works, their response is they're just too busy helping people to devise experiments and do any kind of proving of astrology.
Besides which, astrology doesn't need any proof 'cause they have thousands of years of satisfied customers.
So if the astrologers didn't want to advance any proofs about whether astrology works or it doesn't, maybe we could help them out and do some experiments ourself.
In one study, scientists tested one of astrology's biggest claims Is the ancient system accurate at predicting which Zodiac signs are compatible or incompatible when it comes to relationships? At Michigan State University, a psychologist collected the marriage and divorce records for the state of Michigan and surveyed the Zodiac signs among approximately 3,000 couples who got married and 500 who got divorced.
Psychologists tried to see were more compatible signs married and more incompatible signs divorced? And the answer was it was completely random.
The divorces were evenly spread among the signs.
The marriages were evenly spread among the signs.
Nothing about getting married or getting divorced was visible in their astrological characteristics.
These stars you see at night, trillions upon trillions of miles away and yet some people believe that the motion of these gigantic objects is just there so you can meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger tomorrow.
If astrology can't predict compatibility, can it provide clues about a person's most suitable profession? In a well-publicized study, a French psychologist looked at famous people to see if occupations lined up with particular signs of the Zodiac.
The best-known finding was called "The Mars Effect.
" It alleged that champion athletes were born when the planet Mars, known astrologically as the Warrior Planet, was rising or at its highest point when viewed from earth.
That study has been repeated later with a much more carefully selected sample, with much more careful procedures.
And there, the correlations with athletes are no better than the correlations that you get among just a random sample of people who are not star athletes.
The idea that somehow the position of Mars the day I'm born is important, that it will tell them something about my life or my destiny That's nonsense.
There's no evidence for it either in the statistical tests or in the examinations of the mechanism of how astrology works.
Astrology cannot pass the test of science, but that doesn't seem to sway the true believers.
The National Science Foundation recently reported that almost half of all Americans think astrology is scientific.
Astrology isn't science in terms of hard, fast science.
But it's more like psychology.
Astrology shows us the habits and patterns and tendencies of the human psyche, and then, of course, the person's individual free will has to interact with that in some way, and there's no control group for that particular experiment.
There are things that we just don't know.
In some ways, a lot of astrology is a narrative that people find gives meaning to things that sometimes seems random.
As long as the narratives are not being misused, not being used to deceive people, I think it's perfectly fine.
Astrology and astronomy share a common origin but now they're completely separate disciplines.
Astronomers admit humans do have a deep connection to the universe but not in the way astrologers think.
We are directly connected to the cosmos.
The atoms in our bodies are made for us by previous generations of stars, distributed throughout the universe by the explosions of stars.
The warmth of the sun, the energy of the sun made life on earth possible.
What I would hope is that people will look at the universe as a modern mystery and try to learn more about the fascinating world of stars and planets, not ancient gods.
Astrology is not just based out of something in the thin air.
It's a celestial fingerprint for somebody.
For centuries, millions of people, from paupers to powerful world leaders, have relied on the ancient system for answers.
Mrs.
Reagan had actually hired an astrologer to guide the schedule of the President.
But is there any proof astrology actually works? Astrological predictions are just guesswork.
Astrology has been fighting a cosmic battle for centuries.
Is it a science or merely a superstition? Ancient mysteries shrouded in the shadows of time.
Now can they finally be solved by looking to the heavens? The truth is up there, hidden among the stars, in a place we call The Universe.
Astrology, an ancient system based on the idea that celestial phenomena in the universe have a direct effect on human lives on earth.
Yet for centuries, the public has been mixing up astrology with astronomy.
I am an Aquarius, so why should I care? I'm a scientist, right? However, I do realize, watching my students, that astrology is a great way to break the ice at a party.
The first thing you ask a date is "what's your sign?" But is there any scientific basis behind astrology? And how is it different from astronomy? Astronomy has its real origins in astrology because the first astronomers were actually the astrologers.
To understand this, we have to travel back to the Babylonians, who lived in what is now Iraq, during the second millennium B.
C.
There, a select class of sky-watchers viewed the mysterious heavens as a gigantic projection screen.
They formed stories surrounding ominous celestial objects that they believed were mighty gods controlling life on earth.
In ancient times, when we didn't understand what those objects were up in the sky, there were some people who began to keep track of them and try and relate those, perhaps, godlike beings to everyday lives here on earth.
People observing the heavens immediately noticed that there was a daily rhythm to the sky.
That rhythm was that everything rose in the east and set in the west, on a daily cycle.
But over the years, ancient people noticed that there were seven objects in the sky that had a motion separate from that daily rising and setting.
The seven objects were the Sun, Moon, and the five planets visible to the human eye.
Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Mercury.
The early astrologers created the seven days of the week based on these celestial bodies.
And this began the Babylonian Era, when they were tracking and charting cycles of time.
So with this first form of astrology, it was more about fate and destiny, and looking at the gods in the sky to see how they could best survive the cycles of time that they were in.
Astrology quickly spread throughout Asia and Europe.
By the 4th century B.
C.
, Greek astrologers made a big discovery.
The Sun moved across a pattern of stars in a restricted narrow path, which is now known to scientists as the ecliptic.
Now you can imagine the Sun projected against the stars over the course of the year, and you can't see those stars because it's daytime, but they're there.
And the path that the Sun makes over the course of the year, among the stars, that is the path of the ecliptic.
The ancient astrologers divided the ecliptic band into 12 equal parts based on 12 collections, or patterns of stars, known as constellations.
They noticed that some of these constellations vaguely resembled animals and named them accordingly.
There was a pattern of stars that we call Leo today, that looked like a lion.
There was one, which looked like a bull, which we, today, call Taurus.
Now today we call a place that has a number of animals in it a zoo.
And from that same root word, they got the word "zoodaic" or zodiac.
We call them constellations, they call them signs, through which the seven gods travel.
If you look at the constellations, they don't really look like a bull or a ram, necessarily.
But they were really projecting their interior psychic perspective out onto these stars through their myths and stories, and then trying to make sense of their lives and how they lived.
For thousands of years, people used astrology to make decisions about when to hunt, harvest, or wage war.
Many kings, queens, and emperors relied on astrologers for virtually every move they made.
And of course, the kings and queens of old, they were very superstitious.
They realized that if they make the wrong turn, I mean, someone's gonna take over the throne.
And they tried to use the Sun and the stars as a way to predict the future.
But in the 17th Century, astrology came under scrutiny.
Based on observations made by others, Astrologer and physicist, Johannes Kepler, proposed the three laws of planetary motion to describe how the planets orbit the Sun.
Kepler's laws helped to usher in a new science called astronomy.
However, he, and many other scientists, continued to practice astrology.
Thousands of years ago, we didn't have NASA.
We didn't have the National Science Foundation.
Kepler, Johannes Kepler, one of the greatest early astronomers, made his living by being an astrologer.
And so all the great astronomers of old, let's face it, they made pocket money by being on the payroll of a superstitious king or queen who wanted to know, "what is your sign?" But the invention of the telescope, in the early 1600s, overturned the ancient view of the universe, and challenged the very basis of astrology.
Astronomers began to realize that stars that made up the 12 constellations are not twinkling dots imbedded in a flat background, but are actually distant suns at very different distances from Earth, and from each other.
Turn it on.
We're setting up lights in this field to form one of the most recognizable images in the night sky.
Behind me, is a replica of the Big Dipper.
Like the real the real Big Dipper, this appears to be a two-dimensional, or flat, pattern of lights against the sky.
However, these stars are actually not close to each other in space.
But are, in fact, different distances, both from our earth and from one another.
If we could see our Big Dipper from any other point in the universe, what we would see is that the familiar pattern of stars that we know so well disappears.
And instead, the stars become randomly oriented next to one another in the sky.
The Big Dipper isn't even a constellation.
It's an asterism.
A smaller pattern of stars within a much bigger constellation named Ursa Major.
And Ursa Major isn't even included in the constellations that make up the astrological zodiac.
Astronomers soon realized there could be endless numbers of constellations depending on your point of reference in the universe.
Constellations are completely made up.
There's no reality to them.
Different civilizations assigned different star patterns different names.
This is very much like playing Connect the Dots.
The International Astronomical Union would eventually agree on an official set of constellations, which are simply artificial aids to help study the stars of the universe.
By the 18th Century, astrology and astronomy became completely separate disciplines.
And scientists stripped all forms of spiritualism from the scientific study of the stars.
Astrology and astronomy seemed to part ways during the Enlightenment period.
And it was the same period that the movement of the planets was simply just the movement of the planets, and not the movement of, also, psychological influences.
But many remain convinced that astrology determines people's personalities.
So what happens when we challenge two astrologers to do an astrological reading on one of the 20th Century's most famous people without revealing his name.
Just when and where he was born.
Astrology, an ancient tradition that proclaims the stars, Sun, Moon, and planets are guardians of our strengths, ambitions, and destiny.
But after thousands of years of existence, astrology suffered a decline, as the Western world turned to astronomy for a scientific study of the universe.
The two disciplines diverged, with astronomy becoming strictly about the observations of the heavens and their predictions made through physical laws whereas astrology continued to be the predictions of the lives of individuals based on the apparent positions of astronomical objects in the sky.
In the 1930s, astrology experienced a sudden resurgence with the introduction of daily horoscope columns in newspapers.
They provided brief forecasts of a person's day based on their Sun sign, or the position of the Sun at the moment of their birth as it passed through the 12 constellations of the zodiac.
The daily horoscopes quickly gained popularity and helped to sell newspapers.
But were they peddling a false bill of goods? If you think about it, what that implies is that 1/12 of the world will be having the same kind of day.
If you divide the entire world into 12 groups by the date that they happen to be born, then 1/12 of the world would be having the same kind of day.
Now what are the odds that 1/12 of the world's population, about 500 million people, are having nearly the same type of day? Moreover, all of the predictions are pretty vague and general.
You can find aspects that seem to pertain to the day that you're having.
Even astrologers admit that daily newspaper horoscopes are far too simplistic.
When astronomers reduce astrology just to a Sun sign understanding to debunk it, they're really missing the complexity of the actual birth chart that every individual has.
Astrologers say a true horoscope is a personal birth, or natal chart.
A cosmic map that considers the influence of, not only the Sun, but also the Moon, and the planets at the exact date, time, and place of birth of a specific person.
I do think the horoscope is absolutely scientific.
It's something that charts exactly where everything was in the sky at that exact moment for that particular person when they were born.
And what that sets off is this clock of destiny that the horoscope speaks to.
So it's a dynamic, empirical tool to see when are you scheduled, in your life, to have certain shifts and transformations.
I mean, these things are about fate and destiny.
To test the accuracy of the horoscope, two well-respected astrologers are provided the date, time, and location of birth, of an anonymous person from history, in order to create a birth chart.
So as astrologers, we used to have to use lots of calculations and table to create birth charts.
Now we're able to generate charts with computers and programs.
What we need are three primary things to create any birth chart.
We need somebody's birthdate, and this person's birthdate is May 29, 1917.
And then, we also need exact birth time.
So 3:00 P.
M.
And then this person was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
I entered all the information and it created this chart, which is blown up and represented here.
A birth chart positions the signs in the 12 houses, or constellations, and the Sun, Moon, and planets, at their rightful celestial longitudes.
The astrologer then analyzes the aspects, or angles, the planets make to each other, in order to get a reading of the person.
So for this particular person, we have a rising sign of Libra.
The Sun sign, over here, is in Gemini.
And the Moon, over here, in the 11th house, is in Virgo.
I see that the Sun in Gemini is in the 8th house here.
Gemini is the sign of being a teacher, a communicator, orator.
This person comes in with a real strong desire to serve.
Whoever this person was probably had an incredible ability to orate and speak about whatever he or she was passionate about.
There is another indicator here.
In a relationship that we call The Grand Trine which exists between the Moon, Mars, and what we call the North Node.
This suggests that it would be his or her destiny to be in the public eye.
This is a person with potentially very great vision and lots of dreams.
The astrologers seem to provide similar readings of the mystery person We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things.
Who happens to be the late president John F.
Kennedy.
But were these readings based on science or sheer luck? Would most presidents who were strong orators have similar charts? Different astrologers make different predictions, and as far as anyone can see, from a serious study of the predictions, they are really not matched by the observable facts.
There's no statistically significant study that shows that astrological predictions are any better than just guesswork.
Despite skepticism amongst scientists, many people have relied on astrology to make crucial decisions that affected millions if lives.
During World War II, Adolf Hitler secretly employed an astrologer, who was later imprisoned when predicting Germany would lose the North African campaign.
British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, also sought advice from an astrologer.
As did former Russian president, Boris Yelstin.
During the 1980s, the Reagan Administration allowed the daily affairs of the White House to be strictly managed by an astrologer.
Mrs.
Reagan thought that election years ending with a zero were bad luck.
President Kennedy had been elected in 1960.
He had died in Office.
President Roosevelt, who was elected in 1940, died in Office.
So she was very concerned that President Reagan had been elected in 1980.
And in his first term, there was a very serious assassination attempt.
President Reagan.
And what happened is that the Chief of Staff of the White House then had a color code on each day of the calendar.
And the color code told them what was okay to do that day, what was not okay.
And they postponed meeting so the President wouldn't fly on the astrologically unapproved days.
The Reagans were hardly alone.
By the 1980s, an estimated 50 million Americans claimed to know their astrological signs, and followed their daily horoscope.
But then, the scientific community responded with a bombshell that questioned astrology very foundation.
Was everyone's zodiac sign completely wrong? ogy seems like a science with math, complicated diagrams, and a specialized vocabulary.
But can it actually unlock the secrets of your destiny? Scientists claim there's a celestial phenomenon that throws the entire astrological zodiac into question.
The early astrologers had observed the Sun spending about a month in each of the 12 signs of the zodiac over the course of one year.
But there's one crucial thing that the ancient sky-watchers did not know.
Due to gravitational tugs by the Moon and the Sun, the Earth's axis of rotation slowly wobbles.
This wobble is called precession.
To illustrate precession, here, I've got spinning gyroscope, which represents the spinning Earth.
And you can see that its axis is tilted a little bit, and gravity is trying to topple it over.
But instead of falling over, the gyroscope precesses.
It rotates around an axis that goes through the pivot point.
In the same way, Earth's axis of rotation is describing a conical path, which leads to precession of the equinoxes.
It takes 26,000 years for the precession of the Earth's axis to complete one cycle.
As a result, in the more than 2,000 years since the Western horoscope was created, Earth's slow wobble has caused the Sun's position to lag behind by about a month.
This has surprising implications for astrology.
Because that precession of the Earth's axis is roughly every 26,000 years, that translates into, every 2,000 years, those 12 constellations have lagged by a whole constellation.
So that means that every 2,000 years, if your astrology doesn't take that into account, you'll be a whole star sign out in your astrological predictions.
This would mean everyone has been reading the wrong horoscope.
Your astrological sign would actually be the one that precedes your birth month.
So for example, most people born in late March and early April, who think they're Pisces, are actually Aquarius.
At least as far as the Sun's position is concerned.
How do Western astrologers get around the dilemma caused by precession? The answer is they ignore the actual position of the stars.
Instead, they divide the year into four seasons, and say that the period they call Aries starts at the moment of the spring, or vernal equinox.
The Cancer begins at the moment of the summer solstice.
Libra start at the autumnal equinox.
And Capricorn, at the winter solstice.
In Western astrology, we're not looking at it in terms of the background stars in the constellations.
As far as the signs in the horoscope goes, it is based on the movement of our own planet and the equinoxes.
But since this new form of astrology ignores the actual position of the constellations, critics say it undermines the whole basis of the ancient system.
I don't see how that can work because the characteristics that astrologers assign to some of the signs have to do with what the constellations look like.
So the Pisces sign is associated with water because fish swim in water.
So you can't then, suddenly, decide that the constellations and the signs have nothing to do with each other.
Modern astrologers insist, the real life force of astrology exists within the planets of our solar system.
The word, planet, for an astrologer doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it does for an astronomer.
We use the word in the vein that the Greeks meant it.
In the way that the planet literally means "wanderer.
" So for an astrologer, anything that moves against the background stars is a planet.
So the Sun is not a planet, technically, but we call it a planet.
Astrology is not just based out of something in the thin air.
It's based out of actual configurations of planets, their relationships to each other, to create a map.
A celestial fingerprint, or a sense of destiny for somebody, in terms of the life they're living and its timing.
One astrological phrase that's mentioned a lot in astrology is, "Mercury in retrograde.
" We've heard people describe it as a bad omen.
A time when one shouldn't make big decisions.
Or they blame bad decisions, or actions, on the movement of the tiniest planet in our solar system.
But what does retrograde really mean? Retrograde is the apparent movement of a planet, seen from Earth, in the opposite direction of other bodies in the solar system when observed from a particular vantage point.
It's caused by the different rates of speed at which a planet travels around the Sun.
Mercury, being the closest, according to the laws of Newton, traveled faster because it's closer to the Sun.
And, therefore, as the Earth and Mercury go around the Sun, Mercury seems to go backwards.
And so we have this optical illusion.
Forward can go backwards.
This illusion is something we can easily see in our everyday lives.
Suppose you have two cars going along a highway.
But one car is moving faster than the other.
As it's passing the slower car, the slower car appears to be moving backward.
It's not really moving backward.
But it appears to be moving backward from the perspective of the faster car.
In the same way, Mercury only appears to move backward for a while.
But both Earth and Mercury continue to move forward in their orbits around the Sun.
Mercury has three retrograde periods per year.
Each lasting about three weeks.
Astrologers claim that certain people are sensitive to this celestial phenomenon.
Mercury is the planet that affects communication, short-range travel.
So when it goes backwards, it means that those things are having a more difficult time moving forward, So during Mercury in retrograde, you want to be careful to start any new contracts.
You want to, probably, plan some extra time for travel.
This tends to be a time of plane delays.
And you also want to be very careful and mindful of your speech and communication.
Particularly through technology.
Whether Mercury, or any other planet, is in retrograde motion, or the normal prograde motion, should have no effect, whatsoever, on how our day goes, or our well-being, or our futures, or our careers.
Scientists insist that astrology must be wrong.
But is it possible that the ancient system is actually driven by a known fundamental force in the universe? Astrology.
Some believe it's a cosmic blueprint for life.
But is there any evidence of a force that empowers the planets, Sun, and Moon, to affect human behavior and destiny at the moment of birth? A lot of astrology talks about how crucial it is to know, at time of birth, what was going on in the night sky.
That implies that there's some sort of mechanism connecting the motion of celestial objects to influences on someone at birth.
But what kind of mechanism? According to the law of physics, there are four fundamental forces of nature by which particles, or planets, can interact with each other.
They are gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force.
Scientists argue that if astrology has any basis in reality, it needs to rest on one of these four basic forces.
But is there any evidence it does? Gravity, which is one of the most fundamental forces in the universe, is the pull of all stuff on all other stuff.
Every piece of matter in the universe attracts every other piece of matter.
And so we, the Earth, are pulled into orbit around the Sun.
We, in turn, pull the Moon into orbit around the Earth.
So could gravity be the source by which celestial objects affect humans on Earth? The gravity of an object depends on two things.
How much mass it has.
And how far away it is The more massive an object is, the stronger its gravity.
Yet the closer it is, the more its gravity affects you.
A way of thinking about that is to imagine that my voice is accompanied by several other voices.
And so what's actually going to happen is that it's gonna be very hard for you to hear me.
I'm gonna have to raise my voice.
But if they start moving away, then the effects of their voices, even though there are many more of them than my voice, will actually get weaker, and produce a much less significant effect than just me standing here talking to you.
That's very much like a planet being far away.
Even though it's very massive, its effects are very weak, compared to effects locally that may be much stronger.
Mars is the closest planet to Earth.
But does it have a measurable gravitational effect on a human at the moment of birth? Regardless of the position of Mars in the sky, its gravitational effect on the baby is much less than that of the doctor delivering the baby.
The doctor has a lot less mass, but the doctor is much, much closer than Mars.
And so the gravitational effect is much greater.
Gravity can't be the physical mechanism that governs astrology.
But could astrology be linked to another force of nature? Electromagnetism.
It's the force that acts between electrically charged particles, producing electricity, magnetism, and light.
Electromagnetism affects a lot of what's going on here on Earth, in terms of how we broadcast radio signals, how things are attracted to each other, how things bump into each other.
That's all controlled by the electromagnetic force.
The Moon, planets, and even the human body, are composed of electrically charged particles, like electrons and protons that make up atoms.
But positive protons and negative electrons cancel each other out and make the atoms electrically neutral.
Electromagnetic forces shouldn't influence people in their daily lives or at the moment of birth, because between electrically neutral bodies, there's essentially no electromagnetic interaction.
Now Earth is neutral, the planets are neutral, there should be no electromagnetic interactions among them.
What about the two remaining fundamental forces of nature? The weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force? The strongest of all the known forces.
It's the glue that hold together atomic nuclei, which all living things are made of.
The strong and weak nuclear forces are influential only over extremely tiny distances the sizes of sub-atomic particles.
There should be no effect whatsoever, in terms of the nuclear forces, between the planets, at the time of birth, and the baby.
Astrology doesn't appear to be linked to any detectable force.
But could the ancient system be governed by one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe? Astrology.
An ancient tradition that links the patterns of our solar system with the patterns of our lives.
But what force in the universe could enable the positions and motions of the planets and stars to affect us here on Earth.
None of the four known forces of nature appear to be the smoking gun.
But could modern science have missed something? Could astrology be governed by a mysterious, undetectable force in our universe? Science can't even tell us what consciousness is, but we know it's there.
So it's very similar to astrology.
We can interpret them and share the influences with people, but we don't exactly know how it works.
Unlike the known forces of nature, astrologers theorize that this unknown force that governs astrology is completely independent of distance.
Meaning the Sun, Moon, and all the planets in our solar system have an equal effect on humans on Earth.
Given that no experiment shows the force that astrology's using, that the force doesn't follow any of the known laws of science, I think the simplest hypothesis is that there is no such force.
Scientists assert that astrology hasn't kept up with the times.
There are thousands of newly discovered objects and phenomenon in the universe that are pushing the boundaries of astronomy, and testing the legitimacy of astrology.
Sagittarius, the 15th largest constellation, is thought to loosely resemble an archer, half-man, half-horse, drawing his bow.
Astrology claims that people born under this sign are energetic and enthusiastic.
But scientists discovered one of the most exotic things within the constellation.
A black hole.
A super massive object with such powerful gravity that nothing can escape from it, including light.
The cosmic beast swallows gigantic volumes of gas, and dust, and anything else that gets near it.
But does it have any effect on humans here on Earth? In the constellation, Sagittarius, 26,000 light-years away, is the center of our galaxy.
And we've discovered that there's a giant black hole, 4 million times as massive as the Sun, right there, in the middle of our galaxy.
That's really neat but it has nothing to do with any physical effect on our lives, in terms of what careers we should have, what people we should date, what kind of a day we're gonna have.
According to astrology, the constellation, Cancer, symbolizes a crab.
Those born under the sign are said to be maternal homebodies.
But scientists have recently made a big discovery.
The constellation is home to solar systems containing planets resembling Earth.
Part of the reason the discovery of extra solar planets is so exciting, is that we might be seeing planets that are potentially like our own Earth.
Planets that received enough light from their star, that they could warm enough to have liquid water.
And hopefully, with liquid water, the chances to be host for life.
But none of these things are included in astrology at all.
Astrologers acknowledge all the new scientific discoveries but claim that the most important astrological influences exist in our own solar system, not the universe at large.
The reality is that if we were to incorporate all of the new discoveries, we would have an overwhelming body of things to consider.
So we have to play triage a little bit and narrow it down to the things that seem to have the most important and influential effects on us.
I think you can lose the forest for the trees if you get too crazy, and go too far out, and start to look at too many variable pieces.
What's most important is just to take in this little space that we're all involved with, within the solar system, and understand your place in it.
Despite the lack of hard evidence, many people still swear by astrology when making the most important decisions of their lives.
So what happens when scientists take the biggest claim in all of astrology and put it to the test? Astrology and astronomy have been engaged in a cosmic rift for centuries.
Astrologers claim their system is scientific.
Astronomers, on the other hand, dismiss it as a superstition.
However, in order to be fair and accurate, the scientific community decided it was time to test astrology themselves.
When scientists or educators have asked astrologers for proof that their system works, their response is they're just too busy helping people to devise experiments and do any kind of proving of astrology.
Besides which, astrology doesn't need any proof 'cause they have thousands of years of satisfied customers.
So if the astrologers didn't want to advance any proofs about whether astrology works or it doesn't, maybe we could help them out and do some experiments ourself.
In one study, scientists tested one of astrology's biggest claims Is the ancient system accurate at predicting which Zodiac signs are compatible or incompatible when it comes to relationships? At Michigan State University, a psychologist collected the marriage and divorce records for the state of Michigan and surveyed the Zodiac signs among approximately 3,000 couples who got married and 500 who got divorced.
Psychologists tried to see were more compatible signs married and more incompatible signs divorced? And the answer was it was completely random.
The divorces were evenly spread among the signs.
The marriages were evenly spread among the signs.
Nothing about getting married or getting divorced was visible in their astrological characteristics.
These stars you see at night, trillions upon trillions of miles away and yet some people believe that the motion of these gigantic objects is just there so you can meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger tomorrow.
If astrology can't predict compatibility, can it provide clues about a person's most suitable profession? In a well-publicized study, a French psychologist looked at famous people to see if occupations lined up with particular signs of the Zodiac.
The best-known finding was called "The Mars Effect.
" It alleged that champion athletes were born when the planet Mars, known astrologically as the Warrior Planet, was rising or at its highest point when viewed from earth.
That study has been repeated later with a much more carefully selected sample, with much more careful procedures.
And there, the correlations with athletes are no better than the correlations that you get among just a random sample of people who are not star athletes.
The idea that somehow the position of Mars the day I'm born is important, that it will tell them something about my life or my destiny That's nonsense.
There's no evidence for it either in the statistical tests or in the examinations of the mechanism of how astrology works.
Astrology cannot pass the test of science, but that doesn't seem to sway the true believers.
The National Science Foundation recently reported that almost half of all Americans think astrology is scientific.
Astrology isn't science in terms of hard, fast science.
But it's more like psychology.
Astrology shows us the habits and patterns and tendencies of the human psyche, and then, of course, the person's individual free will has to interact with that in some way, and there's no control group for that particular experiment.
There are things that we just don't know.
In some ways, a lot of astrology is a narrative that people find gives meaning to things that sometimes seems random.
As long as the narratives are not being misused, not being used to deceive people, I think it's perfectly fine.
Astrology and astronomy share a common origin but now they're completely separate disciplines.
Astronomers admit humans do have a deep connection to the universe but not in the way astrologers think.
We are directly connected to the cosmos.
The atoms in our bodies are made for us by previous generations of stars, distributed throughout the universe by the explosions of stars.
The warmth of the sun, the energy of the sun made life on earth possible.
What I would hope is that people will look at the universe as a modern mystery and try to learn more about the fascinating world of stars and planets, not ancient gods.