Since last Monday’s report of the Zodiac signs “shifting,” believers have been shaken and skeptics have been given to bouts of sardonic laughter.

“The future is uncertain, and sometimes reading the stars gives people a sense of predictability,” SMU sociology professor Adrian Tan said.

People are concerned that their loves aren’t truly a match, their wrong horoscope might be the cause of their outrageous debt, and that their tattoos are meaningless.

While most people were unaware of this information, it appears science has been aware of “the shift” since the second century B.C., according to John Cotton, Southern Methodist University’s adjunct instructor of astronomy.

While the news really isn’t “new,” it has been given a tremendous amount of attention in recent weeks.

Cotton explained this phenomenon, saying the earth not only orbits the sun and rotates, but it also wobbles in the process.

To experts this is known as precession, but most people are completely unaware of this third type of movement. Perhaps one reason for the ignorance is that it takes 26,000 years to complete a full wobble, according to Cotton.

Precession is the cause of the constellations appearing to move westward about one month every 2,200 years. This means that for over 2,000 years, astrologists have not been using the actual position of the constellations, but instead, using calendar dates to determine zodiac signs.

These zodiac signs are based on constellations that can be seen in the path the sun takes across our sky. With the new shift, it appears that a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, is in this trajectory.

Announcement of a “13th sign” further complicated matters for those who read their horoscope. Zodiac sign dates shifted, making room for Ophiuchus in the western calendar.

“[Horoscopes and zodiac signs] can be an obsession,” Tan said. “People need a sense of explanation in their life, a meaning or force behind what they are doing.”

SMU juniors Elizabeth Kirkpatrick and McKell Favrot are Tauruses, or, so they thought.

When Kirkpatrick, a markets and cultures major, heard about the shifting of the signs, she freaked out.

“The characteristics of a Taurus fit my personality perfectly. I couldn’t imagine myself as any other zodiac sign,” she said.

Kirkpatrick reads her horoscope daily. She even has Twitter and iPhone applications. Currently, ZodiacFact on Twitter has 538,899 followers.

“I first read about [the shift] on Twitter when I saw a couple of people’s tweets about their sign changing,” Kirkpatrick said. “I started getting this panic feeling…so, I googled it.”

After double-checking her horoscope on her iPhone application, she was informed she need not worry—she was still a Taurus.

Favrot was not as lucky. She is now an Aries.

“I was really bummed,” she said. “I really like astrology. I think it’s cool and interesting that they have discovered a new sign, but I have been a Taurus for 20 years.”

However, after a report was issued that the changing zodiac signs only effect people born after 2009, Favrot was relieved.

According to Tan, there is evidence that suggests people were concerned with the alignment of stars all the way back to the Egyptians. So, while some people laugh at the hype that has been caused by this “sudden shift,” the large number of followers of ZodiacFact on Twitter proves that some people still care about their horoscope.