10 Strange Conspiracy Theories About Our Solar System

Strange conspiracy theories about UFOs and aliens are something we are all used to at this point—they have certainly been going strong at least since the infamous Roswell incident. While most of these theories generally stayed on the fringe throughout history, the Internet has brought many of them to the forefront of the modern consciousness.

Of course, despite the attempts of some of the theorists to fit every wild claim about our solar system into one box, it doesn’t always work properly. As you might imagine, many conspiracy theorists have trouble agreeing on what exactly it is the government is hiding from us, and just what the intentions of our secret alien overlords are.

10The Moon Landing Was Real But The Footage Was Faked

The theory that the Moon landing was faked is one of the most popular and longest-running conspiracies about the United States government. While we may not know the arguments, we all know the theory well. In essence, the theory states that there were many flaws in the footage that show how improbable it is that the landing actually happened. Theorists have pointed out issues with lighting, atmospheric conditions, and other oddities that don’t seem to make sense. As far as the theorists are concerned, these flaws with the footage prove that the Moon landings never happened, and the whole thing was actually filmed on a set somewhere.

There is an even more insane theory than the Moon landing hoax, though, that purports to be a more reasonable take on the events. This other theory agrees that the footage is most definitely faked, but thinks that we did actually land on the Moon. They believe that, with all the money that was spent, with the rocket that did actually go up, and with the people who really did leave for outer space, it’s likely that such a mission did indeed occur. However, they don’t think we had the technical capabilities at the time of the mission to properly film the event—or the government was afraid that the footage wouldn’t be good enough—and so they made a mockup of the events on a set for propaganda reasons. Some other theories claim that we saw things on the Moon—such as alien life—that the government didn’t want us to see, and that was the real reason for the Moon landing “cover-up.”

9The Velikovsky Theory

Immanuel Velikovsky was a non-scientist who fancied himself a scientist and took to putting together an elaborate theory about the solar system that made very little sense. He published a book that sold extremely well in the US called Worlds in Collision, which posited that many of the crazy events that happened in the Bible actually did take place, and that they were caused by other celestial bodies. Namely, Velikovsky thinks—based on mythology and readings of ancient texts—that Mars and Venus caused many different disasters and strange happenings by passing too close to the planet.

Part of the contention is that Venus rotates backward, and is thus not a “normal” member of the solar system. Velikovsky believed that the disasters spoken of in the Bible had analogues in other cultures around the same time, and they were all caused by the planets Mars and Venus, although it’s hard to say how he established which was caused by which. His theory was vehemently denied by scientists, who were not at all happy about his odd idea.

8Solar System Climate Change

Most people either believe that the climate is changing naturally, that it’s changing due to man-made reasons, or stubbornly refuse to believe it is changing at all. Solar system climate change theorists, on the other hand, believe that climate change is happening, but that it has absolutely nothing to do with anything on Earth at all, natural or otherwise. One proponent of the theory cites news articles showing that there are scientific signs of climate change on Mars, Jupiter, and other planets in our solar system. He also states that Pluto, being farthest from the Sun, seems to be showing signs of warming. He theorizes that the only way all of this makes sense is if the entire solar system is warming up.

This would mean that there is no climate change happening on Earth, regardless of cause—it’s all just the entire solar system warming up. Of course, what exactly this shift in solar system climate is caused by, or how it works, seems to be beyond the scope of the theorist’s knowledge of climate change.

7The Lucifer Project

In the 2001: A Space Odyssey novels, strange alien beings use very odd technology to basically turn Jupiter into a second sun, which is called Lucifer. The idea is that this second sun would be made with the right size and temperature to make all of the moons surrounding it livable and thus create multiple new planets to colonize. This could either provide a place for intelligent alien life to live near Earth or a new place for us to live. Of course, turning Jupiter into a sun probably seems like the kind of idea that would only actually work in science fiction. The idea is massive in scope, and even if something like that could work, the precision required to make Jupiter a sun that could sustain its own planets without ruining the orbits and lives of every other planet in the solar system would be extremely hard, along with the problem of possibly just blowing the whole thing up and ruining everyone’s day.

According to the theorists, NASA has already tried to implement the Lucifer Project, and intends to try again and again until they succeed. The probes sent into space often use a radioactive compound called plutonium-238 for fuel, because hardly anything else works well for a sustained mission in space. We had a probe crash on Jupiter a few years back to protect Jupiter’s moons from exposure to any diseases that might be contained on the probe. Conspiracy theorists believe that this was not just to protect the moons of Jupiter—which they believe we are trying to colonize—but also to test whether we can use the radioactive payload to turn Jupiter into a star and implement the Lucifer Project.

6The Comet Landing Conspiracy

Recently, the Philae lander managed to land on a comet through the efforts of the European Space Agency. However, while many people celebrated our continued skill in the arena of space travel, some theorists had other ideas about the entire event. Before long, due to the out-of-the-ordinary course of events, conspiracies started to crop up. The European Space Agency did say that it heard mysterious sounds on the comet, which only increased speculation.

The theories claim that the billions of dollars that were spent on the mission—and the sudden nature of it—all point toward the comet being an alien artifact. The theory also makes the dire warning that the object perhaps did not want to be found. Others suggest that it actually has a transmission tower and that photos have shown UFOs in the background, proving that the entire thing is a big alien affair that the governments of the world are trying to hush up.

5The All-Seeing Eye Of Saturn

In 2007, NASA published some new images taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which was sent to take pictures of Saturn in the 1990s. The images showed a shocking hexagon that encompassed all of Saturn’s north pole, leading scientists to speculate as to what caused it. In fact, the scientists at NASA have been unsure as to why such a thing would form on a planet with Saturn’s atmosphere. The image was shocking not only because it seemed to be so geometrically precise, but also because of its immense size—NASA scientists say that the equivalent of four Earths could fit inside the area of the anomaly. Of course, while NASA is not yet ready to make a judgment as to why the hexagon is there, theorists at Natural News have some ideas as to what is going on.

The writer at Natural News links to the photo shared on NASA’s website and points out that the photo clearly does exist and that NASA does not understand the phenomenon. He then claims that if you look closely, you can see “a pyramid” and “two concentric circles.” After this, he suggests that you whip out a dollar bill and notice that the “all-seeing eye” on the back of the dollar is the same image floating in the Saturn photograph. He tries to fend off accusations of being crazy for making such a suggestion by repeating that he is simply stating that the photograph exists, and that the all-seeing eye is there, but that he is not making any specific claims about aliens, gods, or the New World Order. He also suggests that NASA could have faked the eye that he sees in the image, but he has no idea why they would do such a thing.

4President Obama Has Been To Mars

President Obama has been accused of being a secret Muslim, not being American, and, in some theories, a secret, sleeper candidate specifically designed to take down the USA from within. He has been criticized for a lack of a service record, along with a lack of experience at most things political before he took office. However, some theorists claim that Obama only appears to be hiding those secrets because he is actually hiding one much bigger—one that would make him look good, perhaps, but that he cannot talk about to this day.

The theorists claim that, way back in the 1980s when Obama was in college, he participated in a joint program run by the CIA and DARPA and became a “chrononaut.” They claim that Obama was teleported to Mars using something called a “jump room” and that he went on dangerous missions on more than one occasion. We call these people “theorists,” but two of them claim to be breaking their silence by telling the truth—they were supposedly chrononauts as well.

These missions were supposedly meant to help us forge an alliance with the Martians to help protect us from intergalactic threats to our species, and Obama was supposedly told that his mission was to “be seen and not eaten.” Of course, if these theorists were actually telling the truth, they would probably not get away with sharing classified information so easily.

3We Colonized Mars Decades Ago

Some people think that the only hope for humans is to find some way to colonize Mars. For years, we have been sending probes and trying to get a better understanding of the landscape and the life that may or may not have existed there. Speculation continues to increase every year as to when we will be able to send a manned mission to Mars, and what kind of challenges we will continue to face. However, some people are convinced that we went to Mars long ago and have had a colony set up for a while. For those who believe in such a notion, there may be new “evidence” that has come to light.

In 2014, a woman who would only call herself Jackie claimed that she used to work for NASA and that she saw evidence that we have colonies on Mars—or that there are actually intelligent Martians living on the red planet. According to her story, she was helping bring the Viking Lander down on the Martian landscape when she saw two figures walking toward the lander. She claims that she and her colleagues nearby had their feeds cut out as this happened. They ran upstairs to try to get a better look, but their superiors had locked the doors and taped up any cracks so they could not look through.

The woman speculates as to whether it was aliens or fellow humans, although her theory seems to fall more on the side that they were human colonists. Of course, you may not necessarily believe her story, considering her other pet theory—she thinks that the 9/11 attacks were just holograms.

2The Hubble Telescope Moon Argument

One of the more rarely heard theories about the Moon landing is that the government could easily prove that it happened if they wanted to—as far as they are concerned, the fact that the government hasn’t supplied them with the proof they demand is proof in itself the events never occurred. Their theory goes that we have the Hubble Space Telescope, which is able to take amazing pictures of distant galaxies. With such a powerful telescope under our control, it should be as simple as pointing it at the Moon and taking pictures of all the landers that were left behind. With these pictures, the government could easily prove the Moon landings, and the fact that they haven’t is a smoking gun to their sneaky, underhanded cover-up operation.

Except, of course, for the fact that the Hubble is capable of doing no such thing. According to Astronomer Phil Plait (of Bad Astronomy fame), the problem is one of resolution. The Hubble telescope, and most large telescopes on Earth, are built for resolving very distant images. The way their resolution works, something as small as the lunar landers (or even a football field) would be indistinguishable from any other dot. Despite this obvious argument, the belief persists among some theorists. Plait has pointed out that, even with such pictures, the theorists wouldn’t believe them to be genuine anyway, because they would have come from the government.

1The Phobos Failure Was Caused By HAARP

A few years ago, Russia tried to send a probe to Mars. It was dubbed the Phobos-Grunt. From nearly the beginning, the probe was beset by challenges. While still in orbit around Earth, before it could even head off to the red planet, it started having problems communicating with home base. The probe was supposed to head off to Mars once it reached low orbit around Earth, but it orbited higher than it was supposed to, and then just kind of kept orbiting.

When stations on Earth managed to establish contact, even the ones in Russia received confusing encrypted data. Eventually, the craft completely failed, and theorists started ruminating over what could have caused it all to happen. While some like to blame things we can’t control, like the supposed Martian curse that plagues missions to Mars around the world, others pointed their sights at the US.

The theorists believe that the project HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is to blame for the failure of the Phobos-Grunt. While the US claims that HAARP is only meant for experiments to understand the ionosphere, the theorists believe that it has also been used in an attempt to control the weather, so it’s hardly a stretch to think that it was also used to bring down the Phobos-Grunt as part of America’s continuing cold war against the Russian people.