MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis astronomy professor said Friday that he’s stunned by the attention he’s getting for suggesting the signs of the zodiac are all wrong.
Parke Kunkle told a newspaper interviewer that the Earth’s wobbly orbit means it’s no longer aligned to the stars in the same way as when the signs of the zodiac were first conceived.
That means when astrologers say the sun is in Pisces, it’s really in Aquarius, and so on, Kunkle said.
The story was published in Sunday editions of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and quickly went viral, with thousands of people fretting on social networks that their sign might change.
Kunkle, who teaches at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, said Friday that all the hubbub is based on “2,000-year-old information.” He can’t understand why his explanation of how a well-known wobble in the Earth’s orbit throws off astrology charts turned into an Internet sensation.
“Astronomers have known about this since about 130 B.C.,” Kunkle said while sitting in his office, where the phone rang constantly, as he said it had been since the article came out.
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