What ‘Mercury in retrograde’ actually means according to science

Mercury retrograde is blamed for a whole host of problems in the lives of astrologically inclined people: flight delays, faulty electronics, arguments with your partner and more. This phenomenon occurs a few times a year. From August 5 to 27, we’re about to experience retrograde again. But how could a small planet like Mercury – the smallest in our solar systemonly a third the size of the Earth – causing so much destruction from far away?

The simple answer? That is not the case.

Humanity has been assigning significance to the night sky for thousands of years, and Mercury is no exception. The term “Mercury retrograde” refers to the planet’s backward motion as seen from here on Earth. Given how predictably stars move across the sky from night to night, all in the same direction, it’s easy to imagine how shocking it would be for old people to see something that appears to be going in the wrong direction.

The first documented observations of Mercury’s retrograde motion come from all the way back to 700 B.C, when Babylonian astronomers etched clay tablets with diagrams of the night sky. At that time, the movements of the heavens were usually interpreted as the workings of the gods, and changes in the night sky were interpreted as a divine message. This idea persisted in ancient Greece, where Hermes (also known as Mercury in Roman mythology, the planet’s namesake) was the messenger for the gods. “Not only was he the translator and interpreter of information, Mercury also ruled trade, wealth, luck, theft and fertility,” he explains. Frederick Bertley, science communicator and chairman of the Center for Science and Innovation. “So it was believed that a disturbance of the God Mercury must manifest itself in events and impacts spanning the entire domain of this messenger God.”

That superstition was also present in medieval Europe, where kings used astrologers’ interpretations of planetary movements to plan their conquest and make important decisions. With the advent of the printing press in the 14th century, astrology as we know it today became much more popular.

Astrology and astronomy were deeply intertwined then, while today the two are completely separate. We now know astronomy as the scientific study of the universe, while astrology cannot withstand the rigors of the scientific method, making it a kind of pseudoscience. All the things that people think are more likely when Mercury is retrograde, like experiencing a major catastrophe or some sort of personal chaos, aren’t actually more likely.

However, that hasn’t stopped astrology from retaining great popularity: about one in four Americans believe in it to some extent. according to recent polls.

As strange as it may seem, Mercury’s retrograde motion is actually a very predictable cosmic phenomenon. The planet is not Actually moving backwards it just looks like some kind of optical illusion to us. “At different times each year, some planets will transit other planets, creating the illusion that a transiting planet is moving in reverse,” Bertley explains. “It is comparable to driving in the fast lane of a highway at 120 km/h and passing a car in the middle lane traveling at 100 km/h. The passing car appears to be driving backwards, but is actually driving forward very quickly at a speed of 100 km/h.”

Retrograde motion actually occurs on all planets in our solar system. That is, every planet in the night sky will at some point look like it is moving backwards. It is like that because retrograde movement is a natural consequence of the fact that each planet – from Mercury to Neptune – moves at a different speed in its orbit.

Kepler’s third law, an important part of physics, tells us that the further away a planet is from the sun, the slower it will be in its orbit. Mercury orbits the sun in just 88 days, while Earth takes a slower 365 days and distant Neptune takes more than 60,000 days. From our perspective on Earth, however, you won’t even see speedy Mercury zooming across the sky. To see its retrograde motion, you need to carefully track where it compares to other stars from night to night.

Although Mercury is by far the best known, astrology suggests meanings for the retrograde movements of all the planets. But as you read your horoscope now, remember that there is an explanation for those celestial movements that don’t require you to break up with your partner or postpone a big event; it’s just the planets doing their thing according to the laws of physics.