No, There Aren't 13 Zodiac Signs
The buzz on the internet is still bunk
By Rick Levine
There are only 12 signs in the zodiac, and, contrary to anything you may have read on the Internet, your sign has not changed. We promise. Every few years, a tired old story resurfaces that a thirteenth zodiac sign has emerged, and that everyone's signs as they know them have changed. Don't believe the hype!
How a perfect storm is created
The New York Times recently published an article -- "Your Zodiac Sign is 2,000 Years Out of Date." Years earlier, Cosmopolitan published an article on the same subject with the headline, "Don't freak out, but your star sign has probably changed ... Okay yes, we're freaking out." Both articles offer breakdowns of the dates associated with these "updated" signs, along with a thirteenth zodiac sign called Ophiuchus.
Unfortunately, the technicalities behind this confusing disinformation can be complicated to grasp, leaving followers of Western Astrology uncertain of the truth. This bad news spread like wildfire, reigniting the same foolishness that ran rampant in January of 2011, when the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a story in which a local astronomy instructor definitively claimed that the Earth's wobble had shifted the zodiac signs. The claim created an instant stir then, setting the web on fire, just as it has continued to do.
Relax. Your zodiac sign never changed. There is no reason to panic or remove your tattoo. And PS: there is no thirteenth sign.
Here we go again
The Internet is amazing when it comes to disseminating news quickly, but it's just as capable of spreading faulty information in pursuit of clicks and chatter.
Fact #1, as stated by NASA: There is a thirteenth constellation that crosses the ecliptic, which is the celestial highway the planets travel along on their orbits around the Sun.
NASA explains that the Babylonians divided the ecliptic into 12 equal parts, "like cutting a pizza into 12 equal slices." These 12 slices of the sky contained stars that became known as the zodiac. They go on to explain that there were actually 13, not 12 constellations in the zodiac, and that the Babylonians left out the sign Ophiuchus as a matter of convenience. Therefore, NASA claims that the Sun, which appears to move through the 12 signs each year from Earth's point of view, is aligned with Ophiuchus for nearly three weeks each year, and people born at that time are born under the sign of Ophiuchus. Furthermore, NASA notes that the constellations in the zodiac are not equal in size and that the Sun passes through Scorpio in only seven days but takes 45 days to transit Virgo.
Fact #2, as stated by NASA: 3,000 years after the Babylonians created the 12 signs of the zodiac, the sky has shifted, changing most people's signs.
NASA is referring to a well-known concept -- the Precession of the Equinox. Somehow, they and other scientists believe that astrologers are not aware of this phenomenon, and therefore don't know that everyone's zodiac sign is wrong! That would certainly be a story! However, astrologers have known for millennia that this precession refers to the very slow backward wobble of the Earth on its tilted axis. This wobble causes the Sun's apparent alignment with the constellations to slip backward one degree every 72 years, making one complete cycle in 26,000 years.
The truth
From a modern astrological point of view, the facts are quite simple:
1. The zodiac used by Western astrologers is based on seasons, not constellations. Astrologers know the planets go around the Sun, but Astrology is Earth-centered and marks the movement of the planets against the four seasons on Earth as calculated by the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes and the Summer and Winter Solstices.
2) The signs of the zodiac are derived from -- but not aligned with -- the constellations of the same names, although they did align about 2,000 years ago. The constellations in the sky at the start of each season have changed over 2,000 years. However, your sign has not. If you were a Sagittarius before you hear about these supposedly shifting signs, you're still a Sagittarius. Period.
3) There cannot be a thirteenth sign in the zodiac, because the zodiac was created as a mathematical abstraction to divide the sky into 12 equal parts, independent of what stars or constellations may appear there. It doesn't matter how many constellations touch the ecliptic, there are only 12 zodiac signs. Ophiuchus is a real constellation -- no argument there! -- but there's no zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. So no matter when you were born, you're not an Ophiuchus.
4) As the Earth continues to wobble, the constellations will continue to separate from the zodiac at the rate of one degree every 72 years, as the equinoxes and solstices continue to deviate from the fixed stars. Nevertheless, your Sun sign, based on the time and location of your birth, will remain the same
Ignorance isn't bliss -- it's ignorance
Unfortunately, rumors like this are difficult to stop, because they spread faster than the correct information that tries to clean up the misunderstanding. Dr. Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, once stated, "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." NASA scientists have successfully applied mathematics to take astronomy into the future. Their formulas, based on equations discovered by Johannes Kepler (who, incidentally, was an astrologer), can land a rocket on Mars. However, the engineers and technicians at NASA are not educated when it comes to Astrology, and every attempt they make to debunk Astrology only brings this fact to light.
