Sharon Polancic, age 9, of Rochelle, Ill., for Fer question:
What is astrology?
Most people would like to peek into the future. We would like to know if fate has a happy or grim event in store for us next week or next year. Some people claim that they can do this trick with astrology and once in a while an astrologist predicts an event that actually comes true.
Astrology rhymes with biology, and biology is the science of living things. A true science is based on strict facts that can be proved time and again. It is a scientific fact that cats have kittens. We can predict that a mama cat will have kittens and not puppies or piglets. Astrology claims that your future is based on the skies. Though it rhymes with biology, zoology and the names for several other sciences, we cannot prove the claims of astrology to be true.
Anyone can guess what will happen next year and, if you make enough guesses, some of them are sure to come true. But even the best guesser will make some errors. Chances are, this good guesser will remind you of. his correct guesses and forget the wrong ones, or make excuses for them.
The astrologer claims that you will get good or bad grades because, say, Venus was in the evening sky, the moon was full, or Sirius, the Dog Star, rose with the sun. The events of your life, he claims, can be read on a map of the sky at the hour of your birth for the sun, moon, planets and stars change their positions every hour. This sky map is your horoscope.
But millions of babies are born every hour. They all have the same horoscope and if we could depend on astrology, they should all have the same fate in store for them. They should, say, all break a leg or inherit a fortune on the same day of their lives which does not happen.
This is very different from a scientific fact, such as cats have kittens. Baby cats may be born in Illinois or Maine, India or China, on Tuesday or Friday, at high noon or under a new moon with Mars or Venus in the sky they will still be kittens. One member of the litter may find a good home and a happy future, or all of them may. One may get lost in an alley or hit by a car. Astrology does not work for cats. But astrologists claim that changes in the sky make :;':tinges in human lives. This guessing game may be fun, if you don't let it upset you .. almost as much fun say as a game of chess, or charadew.
Astrology was started by the stargazers of ancient Babylon who mapped the skies and tracked the moving planets. Those records were very useful to modern astronomy, which is the true science of the heavens, But the old stargazers also said that lightning and rain came from the skies to strike them or water their crops. From this they reasoned that all the events in the heavens must change our human lives for good or bad.