When skeptics try to explain away
photographs that show orbs in the air, skeptics give explanations
such as dust, lens flare, and reflection of water vapor. The second
two ideas cannot explain any of the photos of orbs in the air shown
on this site. Lens flare is only produced when you point a camera at
a bright light, and I am careful never to do that (none of the photos
shown on this site were taken facing a bright light). Also, all of
the photos taken on this site were produced in dry air. In fact,
almost all of the photos shown on this site are indoor photos.
But what about the hypothesis of dust –
could that not explain some of the photos of air orbs shown on this
site? To test this idea, I have done some experiments.
The first experiment I did was done a
few months ago, using cocoa powder, an extremely fine powder which
works as a reasonable duplicate of dust. I tried photographing cocoa
powder as I was pouring it into a container. I could see a little cloud of
cocoa dust arising as the cocoa powder was poured; and I could also smell it, meaning that tiny particles of the dust were rising up to my nose.
I examined more than 50 closeup photos
I had taken in this very dusty environment, as visible dust appeared
in the air repeatedly. But the first 50 photos showed not a single
orb. Finally, on something like the 70th photo, I was
finally able to get some cocoa dust orbs showing up in one of my
photos.
But the orbs looked nothing like the
orbs shown on this site. The cocoa dust orbs were small, brown, and
very pale, without any brightness. None of them were more than 5% of
the width or height of the photo, and none of them showed any sign of
motion. Compare that to some of the photos on this site, where some
of the orbs are up to 20% of the photo height, where most of the orbs
are colorful, where a large fraction of the orbs are bright, and
where many of the orbs show signs of rapid motion.
This week I did another experiment
involving household dust. I made a series of photographs while
emptying the dust collection unit of my vacuum cleaner. Emptying the
unit was an extremely messy affair, because there was all kinds of
hair tangled up in the unit. While heavy dust was being raised in the
air as I struggled to get out all the dust from the unit, I took a
series of photos.
It was the same story as with the cocoa
dust. A few orbs showed up in my photos, but they were only small,
dull orbs that showed no sign of motion. None of
these orbs showed any real brightness. A typical example is shown below. You can barely even see them.
None of this should come as any surprise, since we know that dust is a material that reflects little light (and is therefore an extremely poor candidate as an explanation for dramatic orb photos).
The following table summarizes the
differences between the air orbs shown on this site, and the dust
orbs you will get if you raise a lot of dust and take pictures.
| Dust orbs | Air orbs shown on this site | |
| Brightness | Never bright | Often very bright |
| Maximum size | Never more than 5% of photo width or height | As large as 20% of photo width or height |
| Details in orbs | None | Faces, outer ring, bumps, other details |
| Signs of motion | None | Frequent signs of rapid motion (“ghosting effect,” motion blur), including sharp right-angle turns and sharp U-turns |
| Color | Only dull gray or brown | A wide variety of solid colors-- blue, yellow, orange, pink, purple, and green |
| When observed | Only in heavy dust conditions | Almost always photographed in clean, dry air when there is no dust |
It is clear from this summary chart
that one cannot at all explain the air orbs shown on this site by
using dust as an explanation. The “orbs are dust” hypothesis is not
really a serious theory, but just a convenient rhetorical slogan for skeptics, a mere talking point that doesn't fit the facts.
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