If you spend enough time on the internet these days, the chances are that you'll come across a conspiracy theory or two. Sometimes, these beliefs are of a political nature, but other times they concern the sorts of topics we'd normally expect to find in science fiction. Time travel, hollow planets, and the notion that planet Earth is flat are all concepts that we've come across before - but none of them quite hold as much water as the various alien theories out there.
Most recently, one alien hunting YouTube page named secureteam10 shared a video clip from Google Earth, which they believe shows evidence of some sort of extraterrestrial interference. However, others aren't entirely convinced.
In the clip, a man on the voiceover explains that the image appears to show an almost perfectly straight line stretching 13,000 miles across the planet. He says: "This line up in the atmosphere starts right around the tip of Antarctica, where it than spans an almost complete straight line over the entire South American continent before finally ending in - you guessed it - the North Pole."
And before you go thinking it was just a particularly long trail from an airplane, the man explains that contrails made by planes can't be seen from space. What's more, the line appears to be the only one of its kind visible on the satellite image of the planet, and would usually have to be formed by clouds to show up in that much detail.
"There are obviously hundreds of thousands of contrails by planes but we cannot see them," the voiceover explains. "Whatever created this cloud formation, if that’s what it is, would have to be massive."
"Not only that," he continues, "it would have the ability to go from Antarctica spanning 13,000 miles in a straight line all the way to the North Pole without stopping and without changing direction. It would have to do this fast enough to leave this entire line of clouds in perfect condition like it moved over the Earth in a matter of seconds or minutes."
According to the voiceover, both the North and South Poles have long been a topic of "mystery", with "strange things" happening in both locations. He then showed an image captured last year, in which "energy waves" appear to be emanating from the exact same spot that this line originates from.
However, other people weren't as convinced. Many thought it was simply a Google Earth glitch (which, let's be real, is probably the most likely explanation), while others had some more creative suggestions.
"It's Santa Claus testing his new ride," said one commenter.
"If you zoom in, it says: 'cut along dotted line'," joked another.
Who knows, though, maybe this is a sign of visitors from out of space. Or a top-secret government experiment on Earth. Or, maybe the whole thing was fabricated in order to convince flat-Earthers that the planet is, in fact, round. Personally, though, my money is on Google having a funny five minutes.
