If that wasn’t sufficient, NASA is launching three satellites as a part of its Atmospheric Perturbations round Eclipse Path (APEP) mission. Unfortunately for NASA, Apep can also be the identify of an historical Egyptian snake god related to darkness and destruction—a coincidence that conspiracists have determined is related. A celestial physique generally known as the devil’s comet will even be seen to the bare eye throughout the eclipse.

Finally, many have linked the eclipse with the imminent sacrifice of red heifers in Israel, a observe that some Jews and evangelicals imagine will variously herald the development of a Third Temple in Jerusalem, the return of the messiah, or the tip of the world.

“Red Heifers from Texas have arrived in Israel where they will be sacrificed during the Solar Eclipse,” the operator of a distinguished conspiracy channel on Telegram wrote this week in a publish considered greater than 120,000 instances. “At the same time, CERN will be opening up demonic portals.”

Videos citing all of those coincidences have been posted by conspiracists—in addition to many Christian evangelical pastors and church buildings—and have amassed tens of millions of views on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok in latest weeks.

“There are many indications that the total eclipse in America on Monday is the start of something big,” a famend UK-based QAnon promoter advised his Substack subscribers in an e-mail on Thursday. “Whether the day itself is obviously epic—Nibiru? ETs? DNA activation?” (Nibiru is a conspiracy-laden reference to a predicted cataclysmic encounter between Earth and a big planetary object.)

Sovereign-citizen guru David Straight has additionally posited a wild conspiracy known as Operation Balloon, claiming that the federal government, utilizing the eclipse blackout as cowl, will deploy balloons stuffed with toxic fuel. Straight didn’t, nevertheless, clarify why the federal government wouldn’t simply do that at night time, when it’s additionally darkish and individuals are usually not staring on the sky.

One picture displaying the trail of the eclipse passing over greater than a dozen important landmarks has additionally been shared extensively on-line. Among the landmarks are the birthplaces of former president Bill Clinton and former vice chairman Mike Pence; the location of the practice derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; the location of the 1993 bloodbath in Waco, Texas; and the situation of former president John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

As one UK-based dyed-in-the-wool conspiracist wrote on X final weekend, in a publish that has been considered 7.7 million instances: “That’s a hell of a lot of coincidences right there.”

There is, after all, completely no proof to again up any of the conspiracies being outlined by these people and teams. But if they’re unable, or unwilling, to marvel at a celestial phenomenon that has been loved by people for hundreds of years, that in all probability warrants a minimum of some introspection.