List of topics characterized as pseudoscience

Physical sciences

Astronomy and space sciences

• 2012 phenomenon – a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or otherwise transformative events would occur on or around 21 December 2012. This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar and as such, festivities to commemorate the date took place on 21 December 2012 in countries where the Maya civilization had formerly flourished, with main events at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala. Professional Mayanist scholars stated that no extant classic Maya accounts forecast impending doom and that the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresented Maya history and culture, while astronomers rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios easily refuted by elementary astronomical observations.
• Ancient astronauts – a concept based on the belief that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of modern cultures, technologies and religions. A common claim is that deities from most, if not all, religions are actually extraterrestrial in origin and that advanced technologies brought to Earth by ancient astronauts were interpreted as evidence of divine status by early humans. The idea that ancient astronauts existed is not taken seriously by academics and has received no credible attention in peer-reviewed studies.
• Astrology – consists of a number of belief systems that hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events or descriptions of personality in the human world. Several systems of divination are based on the relative positions and movement of various real and construed celestial bodies. Scientific testing of astrology has been conducted and no evidence has been found to support the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions. Where astrology has made falsifiable predictions, it has been falsified.
• Creationist cosmologies are explanations of the origins and form of the universe in terms of the Genesis creation narrative, according to which the God of the Bible created the cosmos in eight creative acts over the six days of the "creation week".
• Evidence for life on Mars
• Lunar effect – the belief that the full Moon influences human and animal behavior.
• Modern flat Earth beliefs propose that Earth is a flat, disc-shaped planet that accelerates upward, producing the illusion of gravity. Proposers of a flat Earth, such as the Flat Earth Research Society, do not accept compelling evidence, such as photos of Earth from space.
• Modern geocentrism – In astronomy, the geocentric model is a superseded description of the universe with Earth at the center. Under the geocentric model, the Sun, Moon, stars and planets all circled Earth. The geocentric model served as the predominant description of the cosmos in many ancient civilizations, such as those of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
• Moon landing conspiracy theories – claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA with the aid of other organizations. The most notable claim is that the six crewed landings were faked and that 12 Apollo astronauts did not actually walk on the Moon. Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened by manufacturing, tampering with or destroying evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions and Moon rock samples, and even killing some key witnesses.
• Nibiru cataclysm – a prediction first made by contactee Nancy Lieder that a mythological planet Nibiru would collide with Earth. After having adjusted her prediction many times, she later claimed the year of the occurrence to be 2012. In 2017, a conspiracy theorist known as David Meade claimed 2017 was the year Nibiru would hit.
• Vaimānika Shāstra – claim that airplanes were invented in ancient India during the Vedic period. A 1974 study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore found that the heavier-than-air aircraft that the Vaimānika Shāstra described were aerodynamically unfeasible. The authors remarked that the discussion of the principles of flight in the text were largely perfunctory and incorrect, in some cases violating Newton's laws of motion.
• Worlds in Collision – writer Immanuel Velikovsky proposed in his book Worlds in Collision that ancient texts and geographic evidence show mankind was witness to catastrophic interactions of other planets in our Solar System.

  Earth sciences

• Megalithic geometry or 366 geometry – posits the existence of an Earth-based geometry dating back to at least 3500 BCE and the possibility that such a system is still in use in modern Freemasonry. According to proponents, megalithic civilizations in Britain and Brittany had advanced knowledge of geometry and the size of Earth. The megalithic yard is correlated to the polar circumference of Earth using a circle divided into 366 degrees.
• The Bermuda Triangle – a region of the Atlantic Ocean that lies between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida. Ship and aircraft disasters and disappearances perceived as frequent in this area have led to the circulation of stories of unusual natural phenomena, paranormal encounters and interactions with extraterrestrials.
• Climate change denial – involves denial, dismissal, unwarranted doubt or contrarian views which depart from the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its impacts on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions.
• Flood geology – creationist form of geology that advocates most of the geologic features on Earth are explainable by a global flood.
• The Hollow Earth – a proposal that Earth is either entirely hollow or consists of hollow sections beneath the crust. Certain folklore and conspiracy theories hold this idea and suggest the existence of subterranean life.
• Welteislehre, a.k.a. the World Ice Theory or Glacial Cosmogony – ice is proposed to be the basic substance of all cosmic processes and ice moons, ice planets and the "global ether" had determined the entire development of the universe.
• The Expanding Earth or growing Earth was a hypothesis attempting to explain the position and relative movement of continents by increase in the volume of Earth. With the recognition of plate tectonics in 20th century, the idea has been abandoned and considered a pseudoscience.

  Physics

• Autodynamics – a physics theory proposed in the 1940s that claims the equations of the Lorentz transformation are incorrectly formulated to describe relativistic effects, which would invalidate Einstein's theories of special relativity and general relativity, and Maxwell's equations. The theory is discounted by the mainstream physics community.
• E-Cat – a claimed cold fusion reactor.
• Einstein–Cartan–Evans theory – a unified theory of physics proposed by Myron Wyn Evans which claims to unify general relativity, quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. The hypothesis was largely published in the journal Foundations of Physics Letters between 2003 and 2005; in 2008, the editor published an editorial note effectively retracting the journal's support for the hypothesis due to incorrect mathematical claims.
• Electrogravitics – claimed to be an unconventional type of effect or anti-gravity propulsion created by an electric field's effect on a mass. The name was coined in the 1920s by Thomas Townsend Brown, who first described the effect and spent most of his life trying to develop it and sell it as a propulsion system. Follow-ups on the claims have found that no thrust could be observed in a vacuum, consistent with the phenomenon of ion wind.
• Free energy – a class of perpetual motion that purports to create energy or extract useful work from equilibrium systems.
• Hydrinos – a supposed state of the hydrogen atom that, according to Mills, is of lower energy than ground state and has extremely high efficiency as a fuel. Critics say it lacks corroborating scientific evidence and is a relic of cold fusion. Critical analysis of the claims have been published in the peer-reviewed journals Physics Letters A, New Journal of Physics, Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics stating that the proposed hydrino states are unphysical and incompatible with key equations of quantum mechanics.
• Orgone – a pseudoscientific concept described as an esoteric energy or hypothetical universal life force, originally proposed in the 1930s.