"Everything in the sky is in flux," he said.Įven if the astrological signs were stable, there's no evidence the stars have anything to do with people's day-to-day existence. The complete rotation takes 26,000 years, Rao said. In 12,000 years, Earth's North Star will be Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. But back when the pyramids were constructed, the star that aligned with the North Pole wasn't Polaris at all: It was a star in the constellation Draco called Thuban. It's the star most closely aligned with Earth's North Pole. As the Earth's position shifts, so does our perspective of the night sky.įor example, Rao said, we take the North Star, Polaris, for granted. As it rotates, its axis swings in a circle, pointing in different directions. Here's what astronomers know: The Earth is like a wobbly top. The attention triggered by his interview with the newspaper has been "astounding." Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, told Livescience, He gave the interview at the request of the paper to discuss precession, and the science he described is centuries old, he said. "The earliest known astronomer to recognize and assess the movement of precession was Aristarchus of Samos, who lived around 280 B.C.," Rao told LiveScience.
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