9781422283356

The peoples of the ancient world divided the stars into groups called constellations, which reminded them of gods and heroes. This is the hunter Orion.

If these things happened when the stars were in the right positions, could it be because it was the stars that caused them to happen? It was from such notions that the art of astrology came into being. Modern astronomers believe there

is no scientific basis for astrology: the planets and the stars have no influence on life on Earth. Yet still a surprising number of people make time to read their horoscopes in the daily newspapers. Some beliefs die hard. Astrology is not the only discredited belief about the Universe, although some ideas persisted for better reasons. We no longer believe that the Earth is at the center of the Universe, or that it floats on an endless ocean, or that the stars are fixed to the inside of a sphere. Yet perhaps some of the ideas that are now being put forward to explain the Universe are no less extraordinary.

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