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Time To Put ORBS To Rest - The Truth is Here!

Perhaps nothing in the realm of ghost hunting has created controversy as much as orbs. They show up, usually in night flash photographs, as round balls that appear lighter than whatever they are in front of. They can also appear indoors in a photograph. It doesn't matter whether you use a film or digital camera. You can still get orbs in your pictures. So what are they?

Believers say they are manifesting spirits, energy in the process of materializing. Skeptics say dust, pollen, or other such environmental particles. The fact is that of all the paranormal evidence claimed, orbs are one that CAN be recreated in the lab. All you need is some dust, and a camera with flash. Here is how it works.

Consider the position of the flash and the lens. Most small cameras due to their compact design have the flash just a couple inches from the lens. This means that any dust particle which floats by can easily be very close the lens and still be well lit by the flash. The dust is well inside the camera's depth of field limitations and as such will be severely out of focus. Plus, by being so near the light from the flash will be very strong which causes a well lit dust particle and a prominent orb.

By contrast a larger SLR camera often uses a flash attachment mounted on a hot shoe. Some even support remote flash capabilities. You may get orbs with these cameras, but they are generally smaller and much fewer since the flash and lens are much farther apart than they are on a compact camera. As a result the dust particle which is directly in front of the lens probably will receive little if any direct light from the flash and will be much dimmer or not seen at all. It is only when you get some distance away that the light can hit the dust and cause it to reflect. But then the dust is much closer to being in focus and as such will probably just appear as a small speck or not at all.

So How Does That Rule Out Energy or a Materializing Spirit?

Consider, if we assume for sake of discussion the orb is a ball, a spirit, being illuminated by the flash. The camera flash gives off a set amount of light. It radiates out striking everything equally as it illuminates the field. Now let's suppose you have a baseball suspended from a string hanging in front of the wall. Some of the light will strike the ball and reflect back to the camera illuminating the ball. The rest will travel on, strike the wall and return illuminating the wall. But the light which hits the ball does not hit the wall behind it. A shadow is created, and this shadow clearly shows in the picture.

If we consider the relative size of most orbs as they appear in pictures we can say the majority are about the size of a baseball. So where is the shadow of the orb on the objects behind them? It doesn't exist! Thus we can safely say the orb is either not there, or if it is it certainly isn't near the size it appears in the picture. A dust speck on the other hand is so small the amount of light it blocks would not cause a shadow. Thus the shadow explanation holds up to logical analysis.

The other argument believers put forth is that orbs are energy, they emit their own light and as such don't block the flash. That too can be dismissed. Consider, if an orb is radiating light, it should be visible without flash! It should also cause shadows to be cast by other objects near it just as a light bulb would, or it would illuminate nearby objects as any light source does. The trouble for this argument is they don't do that. Of course dust doesn't radiate its own light either!

But what about Those That Show A Form?

That is a result of what is called a chromeric aberation. This condition occurs because light travels at a different speed through glass than it does through air. The colors which make up light are broken apart because of this much like what we see when light passes through a prism. The reason for the difference is because a lens is not a consistant thickness. That is how they focus light. Better cameras use what are called multi-element lenses which use several pieces of glass to minimize this problem. Cheaper cameras don't, which is another reason the orbs more often appear on those cameras.

As the light passes through the lens it is bent by the curvature of the glass and also altered slightly in speed. The light waves interact as they travel setting up combining and opposing waves which leaves a pattern when the light strikes the film or CCD imaging chip. Thus, out of focus, with a pattern of lines, we get an orb. It's nothing paranormal, it's explainable by physics and the behaviour of light through matter.

But perhaps the most condemning fact is that they are not seen with the eye. If something the size of a baseball was materializing certainly we could see it. Likewise a glowing ball of light energy should be easily seen. But this is seldom the case.

Of course there may be those exceptions to the rule. Maybe orbs are ball lightning or a plasma field of some kind. But there are generally other circumstances at worklike a storm or electrical discharge when either of those are present. And occassionally people with eye problems may see flashes of light, but these would not be caught with a camera.

But for the typical picture containing an orb, unless it either casts a shadow of itself, or glows by its own light causing shadows, it's dust or environmental in nature.

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