According to Minneapolis astronomy instructor Parke Kunkle, whose story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune generated a flurry of panic last week, the current signs of the zodiac are “wrong”, and they omit a “13^th sign”. It’s not the first time this controversy appears.

By Nancy Black, Linda Black Horoscopes, syndicated by Tribune Media Services (written January, 2011)

 

Don’t worry: your horoscopes and zodiac signs haven’t changed. Astrologer Linda Black explained it well years ago, in her Introduction to Astrology: “The constellations themselves do not appear to have any impact on the individual (in Western Astrology). It’s the location of the planets, sun and moon in relationship to the earth, and to each other, that is important.”

In Western or Tropical Astrology (the kind used for newspaper horoscopes), the signs of the zodiac are named after constellations, but do not refer to their current locations (as Kunkle suggested).

Different systems of astrology use alternate methods to measure and divide the sky. Western Astrology is gauged from equinox and solstice points. Vedic Astrology measures along the equatorial plane (sidereal year). Western and Vedic Astrology emphasize space and the movement of the sun, moon and planets through each of the zodiac signs. Chinese astrology emphasizes time, with the zodiac in cycles of years, months and hours. All three give preference to the significance of the ascendant or rising sign (the sign that rises on the eastern horizon at the moment of a person’s birth).

Greek astrologer (astronomer, mathematician, and founder of trigonometry) Hipparchus (190BC-120BC), had “stumbled upon the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes,” stated my mother, astrologer Linda Black, back in 1991. “The part of the sky that was behind the Spring Equinox had changed. Although he didn’t understand why, we now know that it’s because the earth wobbles on its axis.”

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), an astrologer as well as the “father of science” and “father of modern observational astronomy”, understood this phenomenon. Later, Isaac Newton would explain the occurrence in his Principia Mathematica (1687), in which he verified the “Law of Universal Gravitation: Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle.”

“This discovery enabled him to explain the flattening of the Earth’s poles and the tilt of the Earth,” stated Linda, “and hence the cause of the precession of equinoxes observed by Hipparchus centuries earlier. It also was further proof of an interrelationship between all things in the universe.”

Greek astrologer Eudoxus observed that the spring equinox was at 0 degrees Aries. By the time of Hipparchus, it had apparently moved to nearer 0 degrees Pisces. Now, in 2011, it’s shifting into Aquarius. Approximately every 2,160 years the sun’s position at the time of the vernal equinox will have moved into a new zodiacal constellation. Astrologers know each of these phases as a great year, or “Age.” The constellation marking each Age is supposedly indicative of thinking patterns that symbolize an entire era.

The method of dubbing the spring equinox as 0 degrees Aries is still used by astronomers as well as astrologers. Since it’s the location of the planets, sun and moon (not the constellations) which are used to calculate western astrological charts, then the idea of locating 0 degrees Aries at the spring equinox works to give us a relatively stable seasonal format upon which to plot the movement of the orbs. This way, the summer solstice marks 0 degrees Cancer, the autumnal equinox is 0 degrees Libra, and the winter solstice is always at 0 degrees Capricorn. This seasonal method has always been useful for agrarian cultures, and the spaces portioned out for each zodiac sign were determined this way.

NEWSPAPER SUN-SIGN ASTROLOGY
Every person has a complex assortment of signs, whose significance is affected by their location and their relationships to everything else in the chart. To get an accurate reading, the astrologer really needs to compare the complete natal chart of the person to the chart for the day and location in question. That’s why newspaper sun-sign columns can never be more than partially accurate, reflecting more general trends.

To get the most out of them, you need to know at least the locations of your sun, moon, and ascendant in your natal chart. Read those and take an average, to assess your prospects for that day.

“Actually, your own feelings are your best indicators,” wrote Linda Black. “You can tell if the writer is any good or not, by the correlation between the advice and your own attitude! And please always remember that astrology is not a religion, something to be ‘believed’, or a substitute for a close relationship with God. Free choice is the bottom line. Astrology is more like a weather report. If you knew the chances of rain were high, you might bring an umbrella.”

 

GULF SPILL: A sustainable energy company

The Thermal Taming Chamber designed by deep sea current, wind and wave  energy company Ecomerit

First published in El Mundo, Thursday, June 16, 2010

When Jim Dehlsen, chairman of Ecomerit Technologies, heard about the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf, he set his top engineers to dedicate themselves to a plan to avoid a huge scale disaster. In less than a month, the wind and wave turbine development company had a solution on paper (see an animated version here). Once approved, the invention, baptized as a Thermal Taming Chamber (TTC), would intend to have construction completed before August, when the relief wells are scheduled to be delivered.

The system would capture oil and natural gas by means of a containment chamber to drive the crude up a flexible tube around ten feet in diameter, with propulsors and a heating element in each joining segment of the conduit.

The TTC is relatively simple, utilizing a Venturi tube, a constricted cylinder. This tube causes an increase in the velocity of the flow of a fluid and a corresponding decrease in the liquid pressure that is used to create suction, as in a vacuum pump.

The Venturi is used together with a high-powered heating element, and with the injection of hot water and methanol, to prevent the formation of hydrates that freeze the system, which was the main challenge with the other systems used previously.

The containment chamber lowers first to 500 feet above the sea floor, to avoid the turbulence of the gusher. From there, it lowers a tripod of legs surrounding the hole, thanks to onboard jet propulsors that direct them with precision, aided by remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs).

“We send down a chamber with a Venturi inside, which goes down over the leak that’s releasing oil and natural gas, and it injects methanol, which acts as antifreeze,” explains Dehlsen. “At this depth, the water’s very cold. The natural gas has an underground pressure of 10,000 pounds, until it reaches the ocean floor, which is 2000 pounds; this makes it expand rapidly, freeing energy and causing a great cooling effect. For this we inject heated water and methanol, before lowering the inner proboscis with a five-megawatt heating element.”

As it comes out the natural gas changes from being almost liquid to gas. The Venturi directs bubbles of gas vertically to the chamber and later directly to the surface, by means of the conduit. With those bubbles the crude also rises, now in an organized manner, rather than chaotically.”

The process to organize the flow is slow, but necessary. Once this column of bubbles and crude has been created, a cylindrical curtain slowly lowers in three stages from the chamber to the sea floor as a barrier to keep water out, which reduces the quantity of water such that it’s easier to separate the oil from natural gas and water at the surface.

“It works by a natural convection of bubbles pushing the oil to the surface, where the natural gas recovered is used to generate the energy to feed the heating elements,” explains Dehlsen.

The heavily-credentialled Ecomerit team, already recipients of grant awards from the US Department of Energy for wave and undersea current energy projects, gets advice from Dr. Ira Leifer, a researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Marine Institute and specialist in bubble dynamics. He also forms part of the government committee to measure and analyze the spill. “This is the worst oil spill in history, by a large measure,” said Leifer. Let’s see if their idea can begin to reduce the impact. Push it around to your circles to grow it as a possibility.

EcoPortraits:
Recognizing Environmental Difference Makers

Photography exhibit honors environmental leaders at Santa Barbara’s 40th Anniversary Earth Day Celebration

In 1969 a community confronted an environmental catastrophe, an oil spill, which sparked the birth of Earth Day a year later. To celebrate 40 years of solutions and forward thinking, Mercury Press International is proud to feature the work of photographer Isaac Hernández with journalists Carlos Fresneda and Nancy Black in an exhibition of photographic profiles of environmental leaders at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Earth Day, sponsored by the Community Environmental Council (CEC), on April 17 and 18, in Alameda Park in Santa Barbara.

An audience of 20,000 is expected to attend the Earth Day Festival over the course of the weekend. Five years in the making, this is a fitting world premiere for the show that will travel to Los Angeles, New York, and Madrid. The exhibit features the ordinary people who, confronted with the natural disaster of the oil spill, accomplished extraordinary things and started a culture shift: among them Selma Rubin, Paul Rellis, Marc McGinnes, and Bud Bottoms. These activists share the walls with other like Andy Lipkis (TreePeople), Van Jones (Green Jobs for All), Michael Pollan (author, Food Rules), Annie Leonard (author, Story of Stuff), Lester Brown (Earth Policy Institute), Sylvia Earle (oceanographer), Annie Novak (Rooftop Farms), Eric Sanderson (creator of the Mannahatta Project), Richard Heinberg (Post Carbon Institute) and Paul Stamets (Fungi Perfecti), among others.
These leaders embrace a bold future vision, dedicating their efforts towards the fulfillment of seemingly-impossible goals. This exhibit aims to share their inspiration and solutions for a sustainable world. Mercury Press is honored to partner with the Community Environmental Council in acknowledging their profound contributions.

Mercury Press International has been serving magazines, newspapers, online periodicals, book publishers, commercial and private clients for almost two decades, with text, editing, photography, video and promotions. Their articles have been published in over 30 countries, and translated to over 20 languages. Formed by Isaac Hernández and Nancy Black in Santa Barbara in 1991, Mercury Press serves as US correspondents for El Mundo, the second largest newspaper in Spain and the world’s largest Spanish language periodical, with 23 million readers worldwide. Carlos Fresneda is the US Bureau Chief for El Mundo, and they’ve been collaborating on the Difference Makers project for over five years, featuring social justice, arts, and environmental leaders, and from which this EcoPortraits exhibit was born.