Tuesday, January 2, 2007

SCIENCE REHABILITATES ASTROLOGY

From: The future is orange (Roger Dobson, The Times, January 2nd, 2007)

Forget the stars — it’s the Sun that holds the key to your health and future happiness.

Where and when you are born really does affect what happens throughout your life. But it has nothing to do with what is mapped in the stars or whether you are Taurus, Aries or Libra. It has everything, instead, to do with one star in particular, the Sun.

Research shows that the latitude of your birthplace and how much solar radiation you were exposed to in the womb affects your health, wealth, happiness, longevity and creativity. It is because one type of radiation emitted by the sun, ultraviolet (UVR), is believed to cause genetic changes in the developing baby that may have a shaping effect, either beneficial or harmful. It could explain why many of us believe that common characteristics and fates are shared by those born at the same time of year...

It sounds bizarre, but the findings fall into a wider pattern of studies that have found links between the time and location of your birth and various traits and disorders, too, including cancer, dental health, asthma, happiness, depression, mental illness, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies and blood pressure levels.

The reasons for the link are not fully understood, but it has been suggested that the amount of solar radiation we are exposed to in the womb is a key influence. The amount of radiation varies according to where you are in the world, what time of year it is and cyclic changes in the sun’s behaviour. The Equator generally gets the most radiation, and in the northern hemisphere, the usual radiation peaks will be in June and July, but there will be variations from year to year according to “solar cycles”. Every 11 years the Sun goes through a cycle when the magnetic field changes and the number of sunspots grows and dwindles. This affects the amounts of radiation produced.


Unfortunately, Inca astrology.

2 comments:

Susan's Husband said...

It also depends on how time you spend outdoors, what color your skin is, and how much you use sunscreen. Not to mention the weather patterns at the time (for instance, same lattitude but say Seattle vs. the Gobi Desert).

Unknown said...

One can imagine that the position of the Sun could play a direct or direct physical role on one's development without invoking magic, but the stars are just too distant to have any impact. This is a perfect example of the difference between causal and coincidental connections. The constellations that were positioned in the night sky during each month were coincidental with the position of the Earth relative to the Sun, which in this theory is the causal connection.