9 Utterly Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories

Georgia isn't good at snow. Two inches fell in Atlanta last month and, amidst car crashes and television parodies, snow skepticism was born. Georgians bravely took to YouTube, determined to demonstrate that neither matches nor lighters nor blowtorches (a disproportionate number of Georgians seem to own blowtorches) could melt that strange, white stuff that the government insisted was just frozen water. On film, the snow blackens, twists like plastic, and stubbornly refuses to melt.

Although entire Web pages are dedicated to debunking the chemical snow theory, the simplest way to deal with snow skeptics is to put the stuff in a microwave or on the stove. Spoiler: It melts. The blackened snow was caused by soot from the lighter, because butane burns inefficiently, and as snow turns into slush under a blowtorch, it only appears not to melt. Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait explains how the snow is, in fact, slowly melting.

The entire episode, however, brings up a good question: Who was the first Georgian to decide to burn the snow, just to see what would happen?

Look around you. If you're in a room with 25 other people, odds are at least one of them believes the world is run by lizard people, according to a recent poll. Conspiracy junkies are well aware of the theory that cleverly disguised reptilian aliens traveled to Earth thousands of years ago to infiltrate our highest echelons of government. Proof exists in the form of terrifying YouTube videos revealing news anchors with reptilian eyes, and lack of any better explanation for Rob Ford.

You can dispatch the reptilian eye claim with relative ease, but only if you're willing to suffer through 3 minutes of this awful techno music. The quick version: If a video file is compressed, sped up, and zoomed in, a clever video editor can transform any human eye into a menacing reptilian slit. But if you insist on clinging to the lizard government theory, at least be prepared.

What is July 27, 2014? Check your calendar, and you'll notice that it's a Sunday. But ask Siri, and you might discover that the 27th is the appointed time for the Opening of the Gates of Hades. Several shocked iPhone users reported last month that Siri had officially scheduled the apocalypse for this summer, in an odd move that the usual suspects took quite seriously.

This particular trick didn't work when when we tried it, but we can't promise it never happened. Apple developers are strange birds, and iPhone users are still discovering odd pearls of wisdom and other Easter eggs coded into Siri. Various sources attribute the arbitrary doomsday date in this conspiracy theory to a Chinese ghost month or the end of Ramadan, when Muslims believe that the gates of hell reopen. But a few weird programmers do not an apocalypse make, and we are fairly confident that Siri has no idea when the world will end.

Now that even Bill Nye has weighed in on the debate about creationism and evolution, some of us would welcome any sort of common ground between science and religion. The ancient alien theory may offer a solution: Adam and Eve were extraterrestrials who traveled to Earth aboard a space ark piloted by—you guessed it—Noah.

Predictably, the conspiracy theorists say, proof of this story abounds—but the government insists on keeping it all under lock and key. Several "scholars" now claim that, through the Freedom of Information Act, they were finally able to access piles of declassified documents. Official reports, they say, prove that a flying saucer once crashed into Mt. Ararat in Turkey, where it is traditionally believed that Noah's ark came to rest after the great Flood.

Anyway, it just doesn't seem likely that Noah's intergalactic starship, after tumbling through space and dodging meteor showers, finally ran aground in Turkey. But forgetting this silly story for a second, there is the real scientific idea of panspermia, which raises the possibility that our planet's first single-celled organisms have extraterrestrial origins.

In the 1980s German historian Heribert Illig noticed that there were scant archaeological records from 614 to 911 A.D. Obviously, he concluded, those 300 or so years of history simply never happened. Illig's phantom time hypothesis motions that all documents referring to that time period were forged, and that contemporary archaeologists work hard to cover up the truth. We currently live in the year 1708, and someone has been messing with our calendars.

Fortunately, we can check on alleged calendar discrepancies by looking at bygone cosmic events. Through the study of ancient astronomy, scientists can prove that phenomena such as Halley's comet have occurred at regular, predictable intervals for thousands of years. Ancient Chinese astronomers took great pains to record the exact position of Halley's comet in the sky about once every 76 years, and modern astronomical software can be used to verify their sightings. Scientists definitely would have noticed if conspiring historians had lobbed off three centuries along the way.

So you don't believe that man has walked on the moon. Fine. You weren't there, you didn't see it yourself, and you're a bit skeptical. But there is no way anyone could deny the existence of the moon itself, right? Right??

According to a few conspiracy theorists, it turns out the moon is just a convincing hologram, placed in the sky to mess with our heads. Naturally, there is proof in the form of a poorly made YouTube video that shows a power glitch in the moon's artificial electrical system. The Mad Revisionist took the time to parody moon deniers at great length, but it seems that several people didn't get the joke. For a more complete survey of conspiracy theorists who are clearly over the moon, Google "the moon is a hologram," and prepare to be abundantly disappointed.

As anyone who has ever seen a schedule ruined by a delayed flight can tell you, airports are hell. But conspiracy theorists believe that Denver International Airport is quite literally the den of the devil. Stalwart enemies of the New World Order maintain that a FEMA death camp is hidden beneath the airport, and that satanic symbols line the terminal walls. Just about every wild theory about Denver International is tidily wrapped up into a two-part documentary on the topic.

If only any part of the documentary was true. The Skeptic Project took great pains to take on this documentary point by point, and debunk every last detail. Conspiracy theorists claim that Denver's runways form a swastika; Google Maps suggests otherwise. They claim that the death camp was built to spray Hepatitis B on unnamed enemies, but the virus makes a rotten tool for genocide, killing just 5 to 10 percent of those infected. And the artwork, while creepy and open to interpretation, probably isn't meant to encourage devil worship.

Scientists were pretty much asking for it. A natural successor to Area 51, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a secret underground laboratory that just begs conspiracy theorists to speculate wildly. And speculate they have.

Conspiracy theorists tried to sue CERN in 2008 for almost sucking the entire planet into a black hole, but another idea is far more creative. Turns out, the occult scientists at CERN are building a star gate to revive Osiris, ancient Egyptian god of the dead. And they have photographic proof: A statue of the Hindu god Shiva stands at the entrance to the LHC.

Put aside the fact that physics experiments can't bring back the dead. Fine. But what the heck does a statue of a multiarmed Hindu god have to do with reviving Osiris? One of the largest Hindu sects in India considers Shiva their supreme god, and odds are that a religious researcher at CERN decided to invite his lord into the lab. Admittedly, it made for a pretty interesting Bring Your God to Work Day.

When shark attacks off the coast of Egypt sent beach tourism plummeting in 2010, government officials rushed to provide explanations. Their best guess: remote-controlled Israeli sharks. Immediately following the attack, a prominent Egyptian governor said that the Israeli shark theory "is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm." Soon after, proof began to trickle in. Egyptian divers reported sharks outfitted with GPS devices in the Red Sea, and it didn't take long for mind-controlled, bionic shark spies to enter the canon of conspiracy theories.

Scientists later confirmed that the robotic shark gear was just GPS tracking hardware, designed to help scientists study sharks in their natural habitats. And in an anticlimactic turn of events, Egypt ultimately attributed the shark attacks to rampant sheep carcass dumping off the coast. By then, of course, it was far too late to calm the conspiracy theorists, or dissuade Steven Colbert from siding with the believers.

This article originally appeared on Popular Mechanics.