Did you know that the Catholic Church operates a telescope named Lucifer, with which it

is actively trying to find alien life in order to recruit their help in taking over the

planet Earth?

Well, neither did anyone else, until the YouTube conspiracy theory community arose, and

neither did any astronomers in the real-life telescope community.

Today we're going to find out exactly how the Lucifer Telescope conspiracy theory

came to be, and what are the real world things that triggered it?

That's up next on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

The Lucifer Telescope Conspiracy.

Any given conspiracy theory that finds broad appeal tends to stroke the beliefs, morals,

or preferred world views of its believers.

If you're a racist, you're more likely to embrace conspiracy theories that pin the blame

for something on whatever race you don't like.

If you're anti-corporate, you're more likely to embrace conspiracy theories that claim

corporations are behind some global evil, and so on and so on.

This goes for every demographic and for every tribe.

And so we might at first balk when we hear of the Lucifer Telescope Conspiracy Theory,

who could possibly hate telescopes?

Today we're going to dive into this most intriguing conspiracy theory, which even includes

ancient aliens, to see if whatever it's about is as cool as its name.

...