Pace scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock has insisted astrology is nonsense and star patterns such as Pisces don’t even exist.
The 55-year-old revealed the collections of stars we believe to be constellations aren’t actually anywhere near each other in outer space and just looks close from Earth. The esteemed astronomer, who presents BBC’s The Sky At Night, knocked star sign believers and declared stars are just ‘bodies in space’ and due to their distance from us are likely to have very, very little influence on people.
Speaking on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast, Dr Aderin-Pocock said: "I find astrology a little bit of a stretch. [Stars] are just sort of bodies in space so I think they have very, very little influence on us.
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"Scientifically, it would be hard to justify how that thing trillions of kilometres away is having an influence on us here on Earth."
Dr Aderin-Pocock said she was born in March so comes under the Pisces star sign, which falls between February 19 and March 20. She continued: "But the constellation of Pisces is made up of a collection of stars that aren’t together.
"Some are many, many, many trillions of kilometres away. Some are closer. So, they are not actually a collection of stars at all.
"We’ve just superimposed all those stars together to make a picture." Dr Aderin-Pocock continued: "The constellations themselves don’t exist out there.
"It’s just our projection of them, or how we see them from Earth. We group those stars together, but they are not actually together at all."
Dr Aderin-Pocock said that even famous constellations – like Orion’s Belt – have stars that are extremely far apart, but on Earth, we "cluster them as a group." She said zodiac signs are the same, adding: "Some are far away and some are close.
"They are a group of stars that sit around the equator. They are associated with dates of birth.
"So, something might be high in the sky in March so that is the sign of the zodiac that you are born under. They are part of the constellations, but these are constellations people have homed in on.
"Because they are the constellations that are associated with different star signs depending on when you are born and what’s high in the sky at that time."
Despite debunking the beliefs associated with zodiac signs, Dr Aderin-Pocock said "it’s nice to explore" and discussed how astrology pre-dated astronomy. She said: "Every so often people say 'I like you, you’re the astrology woman.'
"I don’t take offence at that at all because it really did start with astrology. People were looking at the stars and people felt as though the stars dictated their future.
"There’s a long history of people trying to understand the future. We do it today, we just use algorithms and things like that."
Dr Aderin-Pocock is an honorary research associate of University College London’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and is also Chancellor of the University of Leicester.
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