Twitter had a collective existential crisis this week, after Nasa's 'new star sign' threw everything people thought they knew about their personality traits, compatibility and more up in the air.
However, Nasa would like you all to know that this is nonsense.
Taking to Twitter on Friday, the space agency, based in Washington D.C., stated: "We see your comments about a zodiac story that re-emerges every few years. No, we did not change the zodiac.
"When the Babylonians invented the constellations 3,000 years ago, they chose to leave out a 13th sign. So, we did the math."
The agency then shared a link to its official Tumblr page to provide a breakdown of the key facts.
In the blog post, Nasa first explains the difference between astrology and astronomy: the former is not considered science and is centred on the belief that the positions of stars and planets has an impact on human events, whereas astronomy is the scientific study of outer space.
It then goes on to discuss how the Babylonians divided the zodiac into twelve equal parts, picking twelve constellations in the zodiac — one to represent each imaginary section. This just so happened to coincide with their calendar, which was based on lunar cycles.
That said, there were more constellations that could have been included in the zodiac, including Ophiuchus (the 'new' star sign). But because their system didn't match up with the number of constellations in the zodiac exactly, the ancient people decided to leave out the 13th sign — and this has been well-documented in their own stories and histories.
So, long story short; Nasa didn't create a new zodiac or wreak havoc on your star sign, it simply acknowledged the fact the sun moves through 13 constellations and not 12, and did the maths to explain it.
