Pluto: Small But Mighty, No Dwarf on Astrology Charts

Scorpios, rest assured. Astrologers will still be looking at Pluto to analyze your chart despite a recent ruling by the International Astronomical Union.

After 12 days of often-heated debate, 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries decided to classify Pluto as a dwarf planet, moving it out of the official definition of planet applied to the eight “classical” planets orbiting the sun.

Astronomers have felt some embarrassment for years because they did not have a definition of a planet. After their recent meeting in Prague, they’ve finally agreed on one: A planet, they insist, is “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that is assumes a… nearly round shape and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.” Pluto is disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps Neptune’s path around the sun.

However, Pluto, discovered in 1930, is prepared to hold its own with astrologers.

“Pluto is small but mighty,” says Nancy Bahlman, local astrologer and phenomeNews columnist. Bahlman says that this change won’t affect how astrologers use Pluto to work with their clients’ charts.

“Anyone who has a Pluto transit will feel it, no matter what astronomers call it,” says Bahlman. “Pluto was disturbing Neptune’s orbit long before it was officially discovered, so it can have that pull or force on our lives, a force for change.”

“Pluto is a very powerful transformation planet,” says Maria Shaw, astrology columnist for The National Enquirer and phenomeNews columnist. She agrees that the union’s action won’t change how astrologers work.

And what about the two other bodies that join Pluto on the list of dwarf planet: the asteroid Ceres, which had been a planet in the 1800s before it was demoted and the icy object nicknamed Xena, which lies beyond Pluto and was discovered in 2003?

“You could bring in tons of asteroids,” says Shaw. Many astrologers look at Ceres and she uses certain smaller bodies like Chiron in her analysis and that probably won’t change, either.

Third White Buffalo Born in Wisconsin

For the third time, a white buffalo has been born near Janesville, Wisconsin, on the farm owned by Dave Heider. The birth is particularly important for Native Americans, since they consider the white buffalo sacred for its potential to bring good fortune and peace.

Two previous white buffalo born on Heider’s farm have also made the news. First was a female named Miracle, who died in 2004 at the age of 10. The second was born in 1996 but died after three days.

In September, about 50 Native Americans held a drumming ceremony to welcome the male calf, born in August. The calf has not received a name and tribal elders are meeting to help interpret its meaning.

Native American prophecy says that a white buffalo will reunite all human races and bring balance back to the world. Their beliefs stem from traditional legend of White Buffalo Woman who brought rituals and music to the people and promised to return.

Odds of a white buffalo being born are at least 1 in a million, according to the National Bison Association, reported in an Associated Press story. But according to Floyd “Looks for Buffalo” Hand, a medicine man with the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, it was fate that chose the place for the buffalo’s birth.

“That’s destiny,” he told the AP, “The message was only choose one person.”

As people leave offerings of tobacco and dream catchers, the farm is becoming hallowed ground for Native Americans.

Sunlight Lifts Drowsy Spirits

Living in the often-cloudy Great Lakes, we knew that: opening the blinds and letting in the sun or going outside for a break, can help avoid that heavy, sleepy feeling in the afternoon.

While some researchers have studied our nighttime exposure to light, little attention has been given to the day, when humans are naturally exposed to light.

A research team lead by Gilles Vandewalle of the University of Liege, Belgium wanted to see if daytime light exposure has effects on brain function. They exposed a group of people to 21 minutes of bright white light in the morning while they imaged their brains.

Not only were the participants more alert, but responses in certain parts of their brain also got a boost, correlated with regions of the brain that are involved in alertness and some cognitive processes. They found that light exposure can briefly prevent the sleepiness developed in continuous darkness.

The researchers reported their findings in the Aug. 22 issue of the journal Current Biology.

The brain regions that were affected by light are also typically involved in attention and arousal regulation, Vandewalle told the Internet news site LiveScience. “So light affects these regulatory systems at the cerebral and behavioral level. This could be relevant for demanding jobs for example, usually performed by tired people.”

Tired people can be found in offices everywhere from the equator to the Arctic Circle, where day length varies widely.

“People stay inside most of the time everywhere on the planet,” Vandewalle said, adding that people should expose themselves to natural light in all countries, since light outside is always brighter than what we get indoors.

Compiled by Sally Kimbel