It was bound to happen, a simple mix-up between astronomy (the science) and astrology (the rubbish) on the forums.

Here's science coming to demolish absolutely any claims that astrology predicts things accurately, or has any other "magical" links to human beings.

I'll focus on the star-sign stuff as that's what Wester was on about in his post on the forums.

Astrologers claim the other planets effect our daily lives here on the Earth, depending on where they were when we were born, and where they are in the present day.

There is only one force that planets could really use against us, that's gravity. The trouble with this is the effect the planets have on us is tiny, it's really really really tiny.

There are three bodies that really push some serious gravitational weight, that's the Earth itself - you don't see us being pulled off and walking on another planet, the gravitational force the Earth pulls on us is huge it's massive it's 1G, it's thousands and thousands of times what even the Moon pulls on us, the Moon has the huge effect on us too, and obviously so does the Sun. The gravitational effect from other planets is millions and millions of times smaller, it's basically just absolutely washed out, it's like being at a concert with the music up full and somebody on the other side of the building trying to whisper to you.

If gravity was the force behind astrology (a lot of astrologers claim it is!) then the Moon would be the most significant body (other then the Earth) by a million-fold, the force the Moon puts on the Earth is huge, it pulls our entire oceans up and down every day, it's massive. The Moon would be the single most important object for an astrologer.

But it's not. Instead all the planets seem to have an equal effect on us. Hmm well that definitely can't be gravity, Jupiter probably pulls on us a billion times more then little Pluto, so even on their planetary things, things certainly aren't equal.

So we know it can't be gravity.

Some astrologers claim there's an unknown mysterious force at work. To fit in with the way they calculate their horoscopes it would need to give all planets equal effect on us, it would also need to be totally undetectable accept by the astrologers.

Problem, if you give all the planets equal effect on us then you'd have to count the estimated one billion asteroids and other planetoids in the solar-system too, after all they're just like planets too, accept smaller, and some are even bigger then Pluto, then of course they'd have to know about the millions of unknown ones too! Then to get really hardcore they'd have to count all the planets in the entire universe. After all if Pluto pulls as much weight as Jupiter despite being way way further away distance and mass obviously doesn't seem to matter at all.

An un-calculable task, as the astrologers don't know where the trillions and trillions of planets outside our solar system are. Yet if we believe that they understand this force, then surely they could predict where the planets are? After all we managed to predict where about 250 planets (and more to coming by the day!) outside our solar system are by their gravitational effect on their parent stars.

But they can't, one astrologer was even quoted as saying if the newly discovered object in our solar system dubbed Sedna was classified by astronomers as a planet he would include it in his horoscopes! Hmmm well firstly surely he must of known about this "planet" before it was discovered by his horoscopes being slightly wrong, secondly I'm sure this magic "force" that these objects cast on us really don't care if we decide to call it a planet or not. Imagine if we decided to de-classify Pluto as a planet, that would really confuse them all!

So we know gravity can't have this effect on us, and we know their "magic" force that nobody can detect, can't have this effect on us, or else by their own logic, they'd have to count ever object in the universe, known or unknown.

Huge flaw #2, if you need even more gaping holes in their nonsense.

There are 12 constellations of the zodiac according to the astrologers; Leo, Aries, Libra etc etc etc. The zodiac are the constellations the Sun appears to travel through as we orbit it, the astrologers assume there are 12, now there were about 2000 years ago, but due to the Earth's wobble as it goes around the Sun it's now shifted and it passes through 13 constellations, yes 13, also due to the wobble things have moved forward a bit, so if you're not getting good results from your horoscopes, try reading the star-sign ahead of yours - that's actually yours, for those who are actually born when the Sun is in Ophiuchus, well I'm afraid they don't include your "star-sign".

The following shows the real dates the Sun is actually in the constellations of the zodiac:

Capricornus - January 19th to February 15th.
Aquarius - February 16th to March 11th.
Pisces - March 12th to April 18th.
Aries - April 19th to May 13th.
Taurus - May 14th to June 19th.
Gemini - June 20th to July 20th.
Cancer - July 21th to August 9th.
Leo - August 10th to September 15th.
Virgo - September 16th to October 30th.
Libra - October 31st to November 22nd
Scorpius - November 23rd to November 29th.
Ophiuchus - November 30th to December 17th.
Sagittarius - December 18th to January 18th.

Compare that to your local horoscope, they're off by several weeks and are missing a constellation! So even if all the stuff about some mysterious force is actually real (which it's not!) then all of their dates are way off anyway!

How do they seem to get a high hit rate? Two things, 1) humans will remember hits and forget misses overtime, 2) they say extremely broad things, like "you will solve a problem today". They never say anything specific like you solved that problem of the washing machine rattling. Most days we probably all solve several problems!

Conclusion: it's all nonsense.