-There has been a disturbance in the astrological forces.

What you think you know about the zodiac may be a lie. The sign you think you were born under is different, to hear astrology wonks tell it. The dates for the western zodiac calendar have compressed and shifted later by a few weeks: If you were a Virgo born before mid-September, so the story goes, you are a Leo (now Aug. 10 to Sept. 16). Congratulations!

There is a thirteenth sign, too — Ophiuchus. People born between Nov. 29 and Dec. 17 are Ophiuchuses. (Your new talents include architecture and snake-bearing.) With all of the chaos in the heavens, one might think that a retrograde Mercury is to blame.

In January, NASA wrote a brief history of how the western zodiac came to be. The zodiac is grounded in history more than science. In short, the Babylonians created the zodiac as we know it about 3,000 years ago. Imagine a laser beam that shoots from Earth, through the noon sun and into constellations of stars beyond. (These constellations are patterns that the Babylonians decided looked like animals or people.) The dates of the zodiac calendar follow this laser line as it sweeps from constellation to neighboring constellation, a bit like the hand of a clock.

The calendar did not translate to the stars perfectly. The ancient astrologers only had 12 months to work with, but the sun passed through 13 large Babylonian constellations. So they deleted one. Although the city of Babylon collapsed under the weight of being conquered repeatedly, this lean, Ophiuchus-less zodiac endured.

Its imperfections did, too. The ancient Babylonians knew enough to track the sun's path through the sky, but they were unaware that their reference point on Earth was unstable. Unlike a globe, the planet does not spin perfectly about its axis...

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