"Richard Noone is moving his family from the Florida coast to a new home in the mountains of Georgia" "He probably won't tell the buyers of his old house his reasons for leaving" "On May 5th of the year 2000 a major surge of the Antarctic ice sheet triggered by a unique planetary alignment will produce tidal waves that will destroy these buildings behind me" "From...the earliest time it was believed the heavens above influenced life here below" "On the fifth day of the fifth month in the year 2000 the five planets known to ancient man move into a rare formation thought to have dire consequences" "None is convinced a disaster of Biblical proportions is at hand" "He believes the cosmic alignment on the 5th of May, 2000 will throw the Earth so far off its axis the frozen waters of the Antarctic will melt flooding all low lying coastal regions around the world" "I think based on...an old saying the wise man builds his house upon the rock and the fool upon the sand because of a possible major surge of the entire Antarctic ice sheet" "I would prefer not to be near an ocean" "Well, thanks for a good move" "Therefore, I'm moving to the mountains of North Georgia to be away from a very real, ah, upcoming disaster perhaps the ultimate disaster" "With the tools of modern science astronomy can explain the workings of our solar system and the movement of the planets around the sun" "And, yet, through the ages many have chosen to explain heavenly events through astrology the belief that the heavens exercise a supernatural influence over life here on Earth I think from time immemorial ancient man has observed the stars" "and the stars have always been a symbol of time and season,plant and harvest" "From the dawn of history man has stood on Earth gazing into the heavens trying to make sense of it all" "Staring into the vastness of space and twilight what could have been more baffling to early man?" "The setting sun disappearing with the light and its warmth" "The rising moon ushering in the cold dark night and a light show of distant stars slowly materializing before their eyes" "For most ancient civilizations anything that couldn't be explained by the primitive science of the day was believed the result of supernatural often divine forces at play" "They noticed patterns in the great star grid that have been passed down to us remarkably intact as the constellations of the zodiac astral signs thought to exercise a mystical influence over our lives" "Imagine what early men must have felt beneath the canopy of cosmic glitter" "You have to look at the entire history of our understanding of the world and for that matter,the cosmos as a continuity that goes back at least to the old Stone Age" "Now, that doesn't mean it... didn't have fits, and starts and dead ends but our ancestors began the process of carefully" "thoughtfully, and systematically observing nature and that legacy is still with us today" "The story of how we have systematically observed the heavens begins in the days before recorded time" "For primitive man the sun reigned supreme its recurring cycles of light and darkness formed the basis of the first organizing principle of our natural world, day and night" "This was the most basic astronomical observation and man's first attempt to explain what was going on down here by observing what was happening up there ln effect ushering in a belief system that looked for casual connections between heavenly and earthly matters" "Many believed the sun needed to be persuaded to reappear after the cold,dark night" "What was going on up there?" "For our earliest ancestors with little in the way of scientific knowledge it was a natural next step to ascribe supernatural answers to nature's most basic questions" "On the west coast of England" "Doctor Susan Blackmore has made a lifelong study of how different peoples have understood nature" "Many ancient civilizations believed man also played a significant part in causing heavenly events" "I once took part in this Druid ceremony lt was a wonderful event" "Hundreds of us climbing..." "head in London or with odd jobs to do carrying things saying the right words and so on and it all built up to this enormous climax as we asked for the sun to rise said the final words and boom, the sun rose" "Now, I honestly felt as much as I know about science and the way that things work I honestly felt that we had made the sun rise" "And, it just shows from a psychological point of view how easy it is for us to connect cause and effect when I've made a lot of effort then I'm sure that I've made it happen" "Well, that way we can easily get led astray" "Early man's sense of wonder at the sun's immense powers led naturally to belief in a sun god ln different forms they are found in the pantheons of many early cultures" "On the ceilings of their Egyptian temples the red dots follow the sun's daily path across the sky" "A painstaking and elaborate tribute to the god that brought them day and night ln fact, the Egyptians explained the sun daily cycles through the goddess, Nut" "Her arched body was said to cover the whole Earth" "Every night she swallowed the sun lt then trailed through her body to rise again the following morning" "The sun also provided the most basic natural daily clock" "Most primitive people noticed a relationship between time and shadows and it was in Ancient Egypt that the first recorded sundials were found" "By1724, the Maharaja Ji-Singh in India had created the world's largest sundial accurate to within twenty seconds" "Sundials were used till nearly a hundred years ago when heavenly-based time pieces were replaced by the clocks and watches of the modern world ln fact, the human body seems attuned to the same rhythms as the sun's daily cycle" "Our natural daily schedule begins when the sun is first rising in the sky with or without any reference to clocks or calendars" "Time really runs us" "We maintain schedules by the, ah, little ah device that's wrapped around our wrists" "And, I'm not gonna try to promote... a new way of thinking either way that we either should or shouldn't be doing it but I think that the mechanization of our culture is is what is so unique to the keeping of time" "and very different from all the other cultures of the world" "Just recently we have come full circle" "Once again, the heavens regulate our daily cycle" "The most accurate modern clocks are regulated by the steady rhythms of pulsars,dead suns way out in the galaxy invisible to the naked eye" "But trying to make sense of the heavens gave us more than the natural cycle of day and night." "Ancient man also noticed how the five planets visible to the naked eye twinkled in the night sky" "With the sun and the moon that made seven imposing celestial bodies that would serve as the inspiration for the next basic division of the natural order the seven day week" "Even today the influence of the heavens on the days of the week is unmistakable" "Sunday, is the most straightforward and the first day of the week on many calendars" "Monday, or Moonday is also quite simple" "But, the role played by the heavens in formalizing the days of the week doesn't stop there" "Ancient Nordics named their days after seven celestial gods and the ancient legacy is also clear throughout the Latin-based languages of Western Civilizations" "Wednesday, is Mercury day, Mercredi in French" "Miercoles, in Spanish, Mercoledi in Italian" "Tuesday, is Mars day, Mardi, in French and Martes, in Spanish" "ln English, in addition to Sunday and Moonday" "Saturday also reveals its ancient roots" "As our ancestors struggled to find explanations in the heavens for the natural events on Earth after days and weeks they found a solution to their next challenge not in the sun but in another heavenly body" "From the earliest days of recorded time we know most people had calculated the cycle of the moon at between twenty-nine and thirty days" "Today, the moon cycle is merely an adornment to the modern clock" "Yet, even the word we use to describe a thirty day period, a month, or a moonth instantly reveals its celestial inspiration" "Towering over all these cycles our days,weeks and months is the year" "The seasonal year that gave life to crops derived from the sun" "The greatest of our heavenly bodies the sun offers the fundamental organizing principle of the modern world" "We calculate everything from our own age to the eras of great civilizations in this one basic division of time" "For most civilizations through the ages the sun was considered a life-giving force to all earthly creatures and by its cycle we have ordered and structured our lives" "Civilizations, ancient and modern have created some of the world's most magnificent monuments in tribute to the sun's powers" "Even the earliest civilizations created monuments with an uncanny ability to accurately track the sun's seasonal cycles" "Before the pyramids the Irish built perhaps the most remarkable ancient buildings on the surface of our planet" "ln eastern lreland a cluster of burial mounds were designed to mark the shortest day of the year the winter solstice when the days begin to grow longer and warmer and a primitive farming people were reassured that soon it would be time to plant again" "The greatest among them is the prehistoric site at Newgrange a huge, circular grave some two hundred and fifty feet across" "A long stone passageway extends from the entrance to a great vaulted chamber where the ancients preserved the bones of their dead" "Above the entrance is a rectangular stone box" "The tomb was aligned so a shaft of light from the rising sun on the winter solstice would enter the box travel down the stone passageway and illuminate the rear of the chamber wall" "Newgrange is one of the oldest structures on Earth lt's older than Stonehenge it's older than the pyramids lt probably had a great religious or ceremonial significance" "The alignment..." "toward the mid-December date would suggest some form perhaps of celebration" "A celebration marking the end of winter or the beginning of the longer days" "Many hundreds of miles away on the Salisbury Plain in southern England is perhaps the best known solar temple and calendar of the Ancient World" "When these massive stones were somehow levered into place" "Egyptians were only beginning to build pyramids and yet, the awesome structure at Stonehenge could accurately track the cycles of the sun moon and stars suggesting an understanding of the cosmos far from primitive" "Stonehenge is aligned to the rising and the setting of the sun" "At the summer solstice the longest day of the year the sun rises over the marker known as the heel stone" "At mid-winter it sets at the direct opposite end of the monument" "We don't know why Stonehenge was built lt was clearly a site that had a very intense ceremonial purpose to it" "We know that it was aligned on the mid-winter mid-summer solstice directions" "They wouldn't go to all that bother to build something that was just a calendar" "Clearly, the place had some sort of religious significance as well" "People in prehistoric... times didn't think of the cosmos in the way we do but they still tried to understand the cosmos in their ways" "And, they tried to reflect what they perceived as the structure of the cosmos in where they put things on the ground how they designed things and ways they walked through the ground lt is quite probable that Stonehenge itself was some sort of model of the cosmos" "ln the Americas, an ancient people also aligned buildings to the god of the summer solstice" "At Casa Grande, in what is now Arizona" "At Casa Grande, in what is now Arizona so that on the longest day of the year the god of mid-summer shines through two holes aligned in the mud walls" "From Stonehenge to Ancient Egypt worship of a sun god continued to bear testament to the power of the heavens on Earth" "One pharaoh, Akhenaten, was engaged in a bitter struggle with the priesthood by claiming a direct alliance with Egypt's all-powerful sun god" "Egypt was a constant...tension between the bureaucracy of the priesthood and the pharaoh who sometimes occupied the pinnacle or the top of the pyramid of power" "And, Akhenaten really was a threat to the established priesthood and was trying to put himself as an advocate and as a alliance with the sun" "Fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ" "Akhenaten proclaimed the sun god all-powerful and banned the worship of any other ln Ancient Egypt the sun was called the Aten" "The pharaoh's name meaning loosely Friend of the Sun" "Akhenaten closed any temple not in tribute to the Aten and marshaled gangs to literally wipe the names of all other gods from all public buildings" "All mankind was to worship the sun the Aten,the sole and supreme deity" "But, encouraged by their priests the people rose up refusing to abandon the old gods and goddesses" "Soon after Akhenaten's death the old gods were restored and a new pharaoh a boy of just nine, came to the throne" "His real name was Tutankhaten again in honor of the sun" "But, with the disgrace of the previous pharaoh the young king would become known instead as Tutankhamen the most famous Egyptian king in history" "But for the Ancient Egyptians the sun was even more than an object of worship and the foundation of a religious sect it provided the basis of their understanding of the seasonal year a legacy still with us today" "Early civilizations in Mesopotamia had noticed how the sun appeared to move eastward in a distinct pattern against the backdrop of stars from day to day" "It was a sophisticated discovery" "First, they created a map of the stars" "Then, they noticed that each day the sun would rise and set in a slight but discernible interval further along against the background of stars" "To complete one full circuit of the entire star field the Egyptians knew it took the sun roughly three hundred and sixty days" "To this day, a circle is divided into three hundred and sixty degrees each degree representing the distance traveled by the sun against the background of stars in one day" "And, yet, the Ancient Egyptians were well aware that the true year is three hundred and sixty-five not three hundred and sixty days" "They complicated matters by also using a calendar of twelve thirty day months nothing added up" "Until some creative arithmetic their official year still lasted three hundred and sixty days but they simply declared the other five didn't exist officially, that is instead, that time was given over to an orgy of merriment and feasting on specially slaughtered animals" "revealed to us on carvings at the Temple at Luxor" "Through the Ancient Greeks and later the Romans modern Western Culture has inherited the Egyptian and Mesopotamian calendar and astronomy" "But, even their three hundred and sixty-five day year is not perfect" "The year, in fact, is three hundred and sixty-five and one-quarter days long" "A difference that may not seem like very much but over a period of centuries, it adds up" "Each year a quarter of a day was being lost" "So when the Romans inherited the calendar in one bold stroke" "Julius Caesar declared that every four years an extra day would be added to the year a leap year, thus replacing the four quarter days that had been lost" "The Julian calendar, as it was known worked well until the 16th Century when the seasons were noticeably out of alignment again" "So, in 1582 a commission under the Pope looked at this misalignment and like Caesar before hand settled the problem by declaration" "He removed ten days from that year" "The problem was that the true year the time it takes for the Earth to orbit once around the sun is actually slightly less than three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days" "The Pope created a formula to keep these dates in step" "From then...every centennial year would have to be divisible by four hundred to become a leap year" "So, the centennial years of 1700,1800 and 1900 had no leap years" "The first centennial year to have a February 29th, will be the year 2000" "The formula is accurate to within twenty-six seconds a year" "So, it will be about three thousand three hundred and twenty years before we need to make another adjustment" "Most of the world slowly accepted the Pope's changes but the Russians only agreed to losing those days in1917 after their revolution" "Yet, by then their calendar was so far out of kilter with the rest of the world their October revolution was actually a November revolution everywhere else" "The sun's seasonal cycle gave the world a simple unified calendar and yet,when some cultures insisted on incorporating the moon's twenty-nine and a half day months, inevitably problems arose" "Twelve months only add up to three hundred and fifty-four days" "So, the beginning of spring marked by the equinox in late March would come later and later working its way through to September" "Only after thirty-two and a half years would spring arrive back in March where it started" "And,while much of the world was intenton perfecting the basic solar calendar many ancient religions turned to the moon to define their year" "The Islamic calendar is based on the cycles of the moon meaning the month long fast of Ramadan moves slowly from a summertime observance to wintertime then back again over many years" "Because the Christian festival of Easter is timed to the Jewish calendar and the holy days of Passover which are also dictated by the cycles of the moon the celebration of Christ's resurrection takes place at a different time each solar year" "ln modern India the Festival of Diwali takes on aspects of the western Christmas" "A high point of the year when presents are exchanged and the countryside glitters with festive lights" "Diwali commemorates the victory of light over darkness and goodness or evil" "And, Diwali too, is timed according to lunar cycles" "Every autumn, just a few days after the full moon it moves closest to a cluster of stars known as the Pleiades" "ln fact, its true name, Deepawali means cluster of lights an obvious reference to the brilliance of the Pleiades constellation" "But the history of our understanding of the heavens has generated more than seasonal and religious calendars" "Modern superstition and supernatural connections between heaven and Earth also have ancient roots in celestial events" "The heavenly event that has caused the most profound terror for so many down through the centuries is the eclipse" "Eclipses are a consequence of cosmic alignment, when the sun, moon and Earth fall precisely into line" "A solar eclipse results from the moon coming between the Earth and sun" "And, when it does, it is among the most breathtaking and awe-inspiring of celestial events" "Even today, as the sun seems to disappear from the sky many feel an unmistakable sense of wonder reverence and utter dread" "October, 1995, part of northern India faces a total eclipse of the sun" "Today, for eclipse chasers traveling thousands of miles the promise of a few precious moments bathed in the twilight of the moon's shadow has become a pilgrimage of deep,mystical significance" "The sky is transformed into a cosmic light show as time seems to stand still" "The once brilliant sun is slowly extinguished until all that remains is a great black disc surrounded by a pearly halo and magnificent streamers of light." "Just looking at the shadow coming at a thousand miles an hour and just, whoo,it's over you" "And, then you turn around and you it's like a bullet in the sky" "The, the diamond ring was spectacular" "Ah, man" "And, it just, ah,makes me cry every time I see one lt, it does something to you I had sort of butterflies in my stomach I couldn't believe it" "We're ecliptomaniacs" "Even in 1995 in the face of the total eclipse newspapers reported that the Prime Minister of India chose to go abroad rather than risk the possible dire consequences that an eclipse is said to portend" "For thousands of years an eclipse of the sun has been considered a harbinger of great evil ln ancient times dragons were believed to cause the eclipse by eating the sun" "The moon too, can be eclipsed when the Earth lines up between the sun and the full moon" "A lunar eclipse was considered no less an omen of evil doings generating panic and great fear as the moon turned a menacing blood red in the night sky" "Rarely, if ever, was it believed a harbinger of good fortune" "Classic example of the reaction is the typical story about ah, how you deal with something like a lunar eclipse in Ancient China parts of Southeast Asia" "Most people..." "Ah, said that when you had an eclipse it looked like something was taking a bite and so already there was this this notion of an attack or, or, ah, ah, a violent act on a celestial object" "And, people felt obliged to try to assist the the sun or the moon in eclipse" "The ritual would involve making noise pots and pans and whatever else you could come up with to scare away the dragon or the demon or whatever it was ln Cambodia, in the late 20th Century pots and pans aren't thought to be nearly enough" "Only when the army joins in with machine guns and rockets is the dragon believed to be successfully deterred" "And yet, by the end of the eclipse eighty-five are injured and two people have died but the moon is saved" "The modern world boasts any number of unscientific mystical belief systems derived from heavenly events" "But even some of the earliest civilizations understood the cycles of the moon and its effect on the oceans and tides" "Doctor Susan Blackmore studies the inevitable clash between ancient beliefs about the heavens and the rigorous methods of modern science" "Ancient peoples would have noticed the relationship between the moon and the tides" "That much is obvious" "But, the precise relationship is actually very complicated and in order to understand cause and effect here... you have to understand the structure of the,ah,solar system and the exact relationships between the positions of the sun" "and the moon and the Earth" "Then, you can draw up, as we have now modern tide tables which will tell me exactly what time the water is going be here and whether I'm going to drown or not" "That's what makes the difference between really effective science and vague and waffley beliefs" "From earliest recorded time lunar cycles have generated all sorts of strange beliefs" "Especially, bizarre claims surrounding stories of the full moon" "Once again, it's the human mind itself that seems preset to make worldly order out of heavenly chaos" "It's not at all hard to collect anecdotal reports that the full moon induces strange behavior in human beings" "The brain wants to make sense out of the world but it doesn't always use all the good scientific tools at its resource just, ah, to make that happen." "And so, instead, what it does is is relate things that seem to be connected" "And, in this case, people remember in a, in a very selective way ah, they, ah, remember the times when it was crazy in the emergency room and there was a full moon" "Miami, Florida." "ln the trauma unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital the medical staff is keenly aware that tranquillity and sanity are severely strained on nights of the full moon" "Oh, that's why we were so busy today" "There was a full moon" "A full moon seems to bring out everyone" "And we will have a terrible day because it's Monday and a full moon" "Just seems to be that on a full moon our calls tend to pick up more than ah, they usually are lt's a full moon, let's get crazy" "So far, nobody's really... uncovered any effect for lunacy or for the full moon" "There have been several studies ln fact, we combined thirty results from thirty-seven studies back in" "came out with zilch results" "We've looked at the studies since and so far there has been no reliable effect" "Yes, it's true that sometimes people get a full moon effect sometimes they see a increase during the new moon but it all averages out so that you have about the same amount of emergencies, homicides insanity during the full moon" "during the first quarter the third quarter and fourth quarter" "Ancient beliefs about the mystical cause and effect relationship between heaven and Earth apply to more than the sun and the moon" "The stars in the night sky captured the imagination of our earliest ancestors whose lives were to become ruled by the glittering specks of light that formed a vast mural from horizon to horizon" "1994, the aftermath of the Los Angeles earthquake" "Some peoples' reactions went right back to our ancient roots believing that bad omens in the heavens may have caused the quake" "When the quake hit it knocked out most of the power in Southern California" "And with the power out most of the lights went out so when people rushed out of their homes into their backyards in their front yards and into the street and looked around what they saw was the dark..." "night sky filled with stars" "That's something they normally don't see in the city anymore lt's such an unusual experience that people wondered if maybe it had some connection to causing the quake ln fact, the reason we got to see those gorgeous stars that night was because the quake let us see" "for a change with putting out the lights" "And yet, the night skies over Southern California on January 17th, 1994 were entirely normal and completely natural" "The belief that heavenly forces caused a disaster here on Earth is just as natural and but one more example of attributing supernatural powers to the natural events in the night sky" "From earliest time, the most well-known celestial portents of doom are the comets that blaze across the heavens" "ln 1997, many saw the V-shaped tail of Hale-Bopp as a sign from above" "What would the people who built Stonehenge have thought some four thousand years ago when it last appeared?" "Fear of comets as portents of doom is a recurring theme throughout history" "As regular as the passing of the most famous comet of all" "Halley'S Comet ln 1066, when England was overrun and conquered by the Norman French a comet appears in the famous Bayeaux Tapestry" "But comets have also been considered the bearer of good tidings" "Giotto placed one over the birth of Jesus in his famous adoration of the Magi" "And stars in the night sky too are said to bring good tidings" "To the Ancient Egyptians the sight of one star once a year was believed to have a critical influence over the entire earthly well-being heralding health and prosperity for the coming year" "Once each year the Nile floods its banks fertilizing their farmland and assuring a bountiful harvest and Egyptians came to believe that one special star was responsible for this recurring act of good fortune." "Sothis was the Egyptian name for the star we now call Sirius" "They noticed there was a time each year when Sothis could be seen rising in the early morning just before dawn" "Soon, like clockwork the Nile would flood and Sirius was celebrated as the heavenly herald of Egypt's prosperity" "That flood water meant life to Egypt" "That's what permitted it to sustain its agricultural enterprise" "This also occurred close to not right on but close to the time of the summer solstice so the Egyptians could see all of these things apparently coming together and figured there must be a connection and Sirius must be part of the picture" "And so, they, in fact described Sirius metaphorically ah, as, as the goddess who in fact, enticed the Nile out again each year and helped bring life back to Egypt" "The Egyptians inherited their understanding of the heavens from even earlier civilizations that developed in the so-called Fertile Crescent in what is now Iraq then known as Mesopotamia" "Here in a land without stone they built the first towns and once great monuments called ziggurats from the first mud bricks much like those still used today" "They were also among the first to map the pin pricks of light in the night sky" "On these tiny preserved stones is carved the original zodiac invented in Mesopotamia and passed down through the Ancient Egyptians to modern day lt was here in Mesopotamia when man first attempted to track the stars above that the two great paths of understanding the heavens" "begin to emerge the science of astronomy and the beliefs of astrology" "It was also the Mesopotamians who began imagining patterns and designs in the starry night sky lt became a celestial join the dot game and soon the sky was filled with all kinds of creatures and characters some from mythology some from real life" "These patterns and designs were passed from one early culture to another becoming fixed quite early in the very shapes we still know and use today" "They became the so-called signs of the zodiac of the modern world" "They formed a band completely encircling the sky and through which the sun, moon and planets pass in their travels across the heavens" "Modern astrology still has its roots in the belief that if you are born when the sun appears to be in front of a particular star sign you come under its influence" "Today, we can explain astrology as a cosmic optical illusion" "Each day in its orbit around the sun the Earth moves a little farther in space creating the effect of the sun having moved slightly against the background of stars" "The Mesopotamians also noticed five particularly bright stars that seemed to move against the background of the zodiac constellations" "We now know these supposedly wandering stars were the five planets visible to the naked eye" "The Mesopotamians recorded the wandering stars passing through the zodiac a skill the Egyptians later adapted in the Ancient Egyptian Temple of Denderah" "The modern zodiac signs of Sagittarius..." "Scorpio" "and Libra can still be seen" "The Greeks inherited the cosmology of Egypt and Mesopotamia" "Our modern Western understanding is derived directly from the Ancient Greeks" "They played with many different ideas of the heavens eventually arriving at an explanation of the cosmos that lasted nearly fifteen hundred years" "Stars, they believed were lights affixed to the inside of a giant sphere" "The sun and the planets were set inside attached to a series of crystal spheres whose rotations explain the movement of the heavens as recorded through the ages" "Ptolemy, a great Greek mathematical genius cleverly explained the orbits of all the planets with the Earth at the center of the solar system lt was his theory that was to last until the 16th Century when Copernicus came up with a new cosmic order" "in which the sun not the Earth lay at the center of the system" "And, his work would lead to even more breakthroughs" "Mysteries like the apparent backward movement of some planets were soon explained using the new arrangement of the solar system" "This vision of the cosmos proved an important marker in the history of our understanding of the heavens lt also contributed to the diverging paths of astronomy a science that can be tested for truth and astrology a mystical belief system" "ln Europe, the realization that the Earth traveled around the sun caused a dramatic rethinking of the heavens above" "The possibilities offered by the new astronomy seemed endless" "They perfected the art of navigating the world's oceans guided by the stars in the night sky ln fact the ceiling in the hall of the historic Royal Naval College at Greenwich, England carries paintings of signs of the zodiac we recognize today" "Modern astrology however, still has its roots in the ancient Mesopotamian belief that if you are born at a time of year when the sun...seems to be in front of a particular star sign you come under its influence" "Meet, Rebecca Salter" "She's now just six minutes old" "Rebecca has arrived into a bright cold and noisy world lt's Monday" "February 24th, 1997, at zero one thirty-three Greenwich Mean Time in Bristol in the west of England" "According to modern astrologers the line up of heavenly bodies for this exact place and time of her birth can affect the course of Rebecca's life" "Her birth chart suggests she can expect to be good with her hands perhaps a carpenter or a surgeon but at that moment as far as Rebecca's concerned her need is for comfort, for love and for food" "A god-like being will satisfy those needs sometimes when she desires and sometimes when the god desires" "Luckily, for Rebecca there is a god someone who will provide just what she needs" "Control is everywhere but it isn't Rebecca" "She is a member of a species that understands parental supervision and control" "The community she's been born into understands the same essential ideas" "Surely, someone or something is in control" "Grasping at celestial coincidence like the Egyptians who waited for the arrival of Sirius and the life-giving floods of the Nile people throughout the ages have believed that we are all tiny cogs grinding slowly and finely in an absolutely determined clockwork universe" "Some would say that for Rebecca the future is already determined" "Rebecca will no doubt wishn to feel she is the mistress of her own fate" "Current science does not seem to endorse this view" "Rebecca, modern science believes has emerged into a chaotic and unpredictable world" "There is little to suggest that vague influence of the sun moon or the planets may have any real effect on an individual's actions" "Rebecca is most likely adrift alone on the seas of probability" "And, yet, astrologers feel they might know the future" "Nicholas Campion has spent many years studying the history of astrology and writing astrological charts for newspapers" "Modern astrology dates back to Ancient Babylon when the planets always studied against the background of the stars" "Now, over the...centuries the Babylonian astrologers devised a zodiac of twelve signs and they gave those sign the same name as twelve of the constellations" "The modern newspaper astrologer has come a long way from his Mesopotamian counterpart using the latest software to interpret what the signs mean for the readers of a New York magazine" "First of all I need to look up the date of the particular horoscope l want and that will come in a Book of Tables" "Then, it's a perfectly simple matter to type the data into the software astrological software packages can be bought quite cheaply almost anywhere these days" "And, in, under a second that will then calculate the chart which can be brought up on the scree" "Here we have the chart for eleventh of November 1996 set for New York and this tells us that the new moon in November, ah, '96 , was in Scorpio" "ln astrology the sun and the moon are called planets because all astrological calculations take the Earth at the center" "But, what we end with are quite contradictory indications in the chart" "Any horoscope contains a balance of peaceful factors or argumentive pressures" "Today's astrological charts and the meaning we ascribe to the various signs are based upon models created thousands of years ago" "Yet, since that time due to the very slow wobble of the Earth on its axis the dates when the sun is in front of the particular sign of the zodiac have changed ln fact, each has moved one entire constellation" "meaning that people who now believe they were born in Aries were in reality born in the Pisces of the original charts" "I think one of the greatest disappointments is to realize that your birth sign... has nothing to do with celestial mystery and everything to do with simple geometry" "And it's even worse to realize that because of the fact that the planets are all moving ah, is that the birth sign you think you are is in fact the wrong one" "Even with 21st Century knowledge astrology is alive and well and followed by million" "While most scientists hold their theories to a higher standard of analysis and verificatio something in astrology remains a potent belief system attracting many to see what the stars hold for them I cannot pick up the newspaper without really glancing at" "ah, what they predict for me but...at the same timw as a scientist I kind of keep saying" "Well, you know, until such a time when I can really prove that" "So, I have those two contradictory parts in me but I, I did, I do indulge in it ah, quite a bit" "At Oxford University" "Allan Chapman has spent a lifetime studying the history of scientific belief particularly historical models of the solar system and how they work" "To accept astrology in... the way that people took it in the Middle Ages we have to accept the idea that the Earth is fixed in the center of th universe" "Now, this instrument which comes from about four hundred and fifty years ago at a roughly a time when people did take astrology seriously gives an idea of what their physical universe was thought to be like" "Here we see the Earth in the middle of the universe the golden ball with its two poles" "They believed also the stars were disposed on a great sphere around the Earth and all rotated around the Earth" "And, the sun moved each month through a separate sign of the zodiac" "The signs of the zodiac which are still used by modern astrologers" "And, here we see Leo rising above the horizon" "To take astrology seriously today you have to accept that the Earth was fixed in the center of the universe" "And, who believes that?" "To really believe in astrology it's rather like putting a Roman chariot wheel onto a modern Rolls Royce" "You can't do it" "They're totally incompatible" "They belong to different worlds" "Astrology...is made up" "People just dream it up out of their heads they're basically doing a con trick" "Ah, they may or may not actually look at the stars I don't know" "But whether they do of not it's not based upon any proper theory" "Astrology is not scientific in the modern sense of the word at all" "Astrology is...poetic knowledge and a horoscope can be seen as like a talisman" "And, almost like a good luck charm" "But, if astrology is little more than a good luck charm does the science of astronomy provide us with answers that will survive the test of time?" "We scientists are always after the truth the truth that can be demonstrated by the facts" "But, as you study the history of science you'll find out that whatever a fact is changes with the time" "The method for...determining what the fact is changes with the time" "Not all that many years ago.." "if I had told you that the whole universe that we think of today had begun in a spot the size of the tip of my little finger you would have thought I was mad and probably rightly so" "But, that what our present scientific information and facts tell us" "What we have learned from history is that we shouldn't believe in or build models of the cosmos that we can't back up by scientific observation and proof" "The laws guiding our universe don't change only the way we understand them" "Over time, our ancestors have observed wondered and theorized about the magnificent mysterious machine that is our solar system" "As our understanding has evolved nature's laws have revealed themselves to us in various forms throughout time" "Some have stared into the heavens and seen science as the answer to our most basic questions" "For others, the fabric of the universe is woven of supernatural influence" "And, yet, either way the gears and the wheels of our clockwork universe appear to mesh in perfect synchrony" "But lately, science has begun to strip much of the mystery from the heavens above" "There are tire tracks now on the face of our moon an icon of romance and the source of inspiration for poets and philosophers throughout time" "Jupiter, the astrological harbinger of justice and wisdom is known to be a vast ball of gas riven by chaotic storms and escorted by its own coterie of moon" "Recently, a manmade probe tested its turbulent atmosphere and studied every aspect of its inner workings" "Mars, the God of War also now bears the thumbprint of mankind's scientific curiosity" "And, our nearest neighbor, Venus the planet of love turns out to be a living hell" "With a temperature over nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit a super dense and poisonous atmosphere cloaks its sterile features" "New planets too unknown to the ancients have been revealed by scientific study" "Neptune, Uranus and Pluto visible only through powerful telescopes turn out to be every bit as fascinating as their planetary neighbors" "And, they too, are becoming the targets of manmade spacecraft" "Where once mystery and myth explained the heavens cold, clear science now describes our solar empire" "Even the emperor itself our own life-giving sun is the object of relentless scrutiny" "Using the awesome power of a super computer we now can cruise unharmed across its scorching surface" "The Egyptian sorcerers were not wrong in placing the sun at the center of their philosophy though few now believe the sun is a god" "But the impulse to see a divine plan in the heavens continues to course through our vein" "As we now look across our galaxy we can see other solar empires being born" "When they are, it's likely some will support life some may even support intelligence lt's already possible there are thousands of civilizations out there somewhere, studying us" "There can be little doubt that like us when they look up into the skies above them they were mariable like the grange of heavens like us they may wonder where they fit into the universal design" "like us they too may wonder what they all means"