Bad Astronomy. Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing 'Hoax'

female name. Traditionally, all asteroids are now named after women. So are we to believe that an object named rather randomly by a man, and a series of objects named traditionally after women, really have the aspects of the goddesses for whom they are named? What do we do with asteroids like Zappafrank? Or Starr, Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney? My good friend Dan Durda has an asteroid named after him. I don’t have any idea how asteroid 6141 Durda (as it is officially called) affects my horoscope personally. If it collides with another asteroid and breaks apart, should I send flowers to Dan’s family?

Despite the claims of its practitioners, astrology is not a science. But then what is it? It’s tempting to classify it as willful fantasy, but there may be a more specific answer: magic. Lawrence E. Jerome, in his essay “Astrology: Science or Magic,” makes a strong claim that astrology is more like magic than anything else (The Humanist 35, no. 5 [September/October 1975]). His basic assertion is that astrology is based on the “principle of correspondence,” the idea that an object has some sort of effect on reality by analogy, not by physical cause. In other words, Mars, being red, is associated with blood, danger, and war. There is no physical association there, just analogy. This is how magic works; sorcerers take an object like a doll that, to them, is what it represents, like an enemy king. Anything they do to the doll happens to the king.

Despite our deepest wishes, though, the universe doesn’t work on analogy (would Star Trek’s Mr. Spock’s green blood indicate that blue-green Uranus is the Vulcan god of war, I wonder?). The universe works on physical relationships: The Moon’s gravity affects tides on Earth, nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core eventually heats the Earth, water expands when it freezes because of the geometry of ice crystals. All of these events pass the test for being real: They have consistant physical rules behind them, they are able to be modeled using mathematics, and these models can be relied upon to accurately predict future events. Also, these events are not subject to interpretation from one person to another.

Astrology isn’t like that. The color of Mars may look blood red to one person, but it looks rusty to me (and indeed, the surface of Mars is high in iron oxide — rust). Maybe Mars should represent decay and age, like an automobile in a rainy junkyard, and not the martial aspect of war. Astrological correspondence is up for grabs depending on who uses it. It’s not consistent, and it fails the other tests as well.

The shapes of the constellations are another indication of astrology’s failures. Technically I am a Libra, having been born in late September. Countless horoscopes tell me that this is the symbol of balance and harmony. Yet look at the constellation: it’s basically four rather dim stars in a diamond shape. You can perhaps imagine a set of old-fashioned scales there, implying balance. But it looks more like a kite to me. Should I then be lofty, or an airhead, or prone to windy proclamations (hmmm, don’t answer that)? To modern eyes, the constellation Sagittarius looks only vaguely like an archer, but far more like a teapot. The Milky Way is thick and dense in that area of the sky, looking for all the world like steam rising from the spout. Do people born under that sign quietly boil until they explode into a heated argument? The constellation Cancer has no stars brighter than fourth magnitude, making it difficult to see from even mildly light-polluted skies. Are Cancers quiet, faint, dim? Why should the ancient Arabic or Greek constellations be any more valid than mine?

Mind you, the shapes of these constellations are arbitrary as well. Libra looks like a diamond only because of where we are relative to those four stars. Those stars are at all different distances, and only appear to be a diamond. If we had a three-dimensional view, they wouldn’t look to be in that shape at all.

And it gets worse. Some stars in the zodiacal signs are supergiants and will someday explode. Antares, the red heart of Scorpius, is one of these supergiants. Someday it will become a supernova, and Scorpius will be left with a hole in its chest. How do we interpret the constellation then?

Apologists for astrology, like many who defend a pseudoscience, try to distract critics rather than actually argue relevant points. Many astrologers point out that astronomy and astrology used to be the same thing, as if once having been part of a physical science legitimizes astrology. That’s silly. That hamburger I ate the other day was once part of a cow; that doesn’t make me a four-legged ruminant, and it doesn’t make the cow any more human.

Another classic astrology defense argues that many famous astronomers were practicing astrologers: Kepler, Brahe, Copernicus. Notice that the list features astronomers from a few hundred years ago. In the end, this argument is just as fallacious as the previous one. Astronomers from centuries past didn’t have the scientific basis for astronomy as a physical science that we now have, and, indeed, Kepler was the key person in making that happen. They were still steeped in tradition. Also, it’s not clear if Kepler believed in astrology; he was being paid by a king who did, and he was certainly smart enough to understand who buttered his bread.

Astrologers go on to talk about the large number of people who believe in and practice it. Is the majority always right? Fact is fact, unswayed by how many people believe in a falsehood or how fervently they defend it.

Yet astrology is still popular, despite all these devastating claims against it. Why? What weapon do astrologers wield that wipes out all rational and critical claims against them? It turns out their best weapon is us.

When people read their horoscopes, they tend to report an uncanny number of “hits” or correct guesses. How many of us have read a horoscope and been amazed at how well it described our day?

As an experiment, I put my own birth date into a web-based horoscope generator. It reported several things that do indeed describe me: I like to avoid conflicts (despite the tone of this and other sections of this book), I seek a partner who is my intellectual equal, and I prefer to be with other people over being alone. All true. But it also read: “You are a gentle, sensitive person with a deep understanding of people and a very tolerant, accepting, nonjudgmental approach toward life.” My wife (who is at least my intellectual equal) nearly split her side laughing when she read that.

But let’s take a look at those apparent hits. The description above sounds like a lot of people I know and not just me. The wording is vague enough to apply to just about anybody. This is the basic methodology of the astrologer: wording that applies to everyone. People will pick and choose the parts they want to remember, and that is what reinforces the belief in astrology.

The well-known skeptic and rational thinker James Randi (better known as The Amazing Randi) once performed an experiment in a schoolroom. The teacher told the class that Randi was a famous astrologer with an incredible record of accuracy. In advance the teacher had the students write down their birth dates and place each in a separate envelope. Randi cast a horoscope for each person in the room, placing them in the corresponding envelopes, which were then handed back to the students.

After the students read their horoscopes, Randi polled them about accuracy. The majority of the students thought the horoscopes cast for them were accurate, and very few said they were inaccurate.

But then Randi did an Amazing thing: he asked the students to hand their horoscope to the person sitting behind them (the students in the last row brought theirs up to the front row), and then read their neighbor’s horoscope.

The results were priceless. Surprise! Randi had put the exact same horoscope in each envelope. You can imagine the expressions of shock, then chagrin, then embarrassment that crept over the faces of the students. The wording Randi used was vague enough that it applied to nearly every student in the room. He used phrases like “You wish you were smarter,” and “you seek the attention of others.” Who doesn’t?

A specific horoscope might be wrong. A vague one never is, which is why horoscopes are generally very vague indeed. The complementary aspect is the all-too-human ability to forget bad guesses and remember accurate ones. Astrologers rely on our ability to forget the misses in order to continue bilking millions of dollars from the public.

And bilk they do. Astrology is a vast business. Perhaps most appalling is the appearance of a horoscope in daily newspapers across the country. In their defense, the newspaper editors claim they don’t believe in it, either, and place the horoscopes in the comics section, indicating how seriously horoscopes are taken. But that’s a cheat: the comics are one of the most popular sections of the paper, and the horoscopes are there to increase visibility, not to take away credibility. If the editors don’t believe them, why are they there in the first place?

One of the biggest pro-space web sites is space.com. They have a huge array of pages devoted to space news, history, opinions, and anything you can think of related to space travel. One day some of the business people in charge decided it would be a bright idea to have horoscopes on the site.