ORBS

The Old Orb Theories

For the past 10 years or so, and since digital cameras have become more popular, the Internet has seen a explosion of photographs of these little balls of light that many misinformed ghost hunters have wrongly claimed as being the first stage of a ghost manifestation.

There are no plausible hypotheses that I could find on the internet that could explain what an orb is consisted of or how does a dead body create one of these floating balls of light that appear on digital camera but not to the naked eye. The only evidence that I have been able to find is anecdotal reports by ghost hunters wanting to support a claim that has no grounding in solid science and who also lack the knowledge to be able to come up with a logical answer but instead prefer to jump to the fantastical conclusion because that is what they have read on the Internet. Of course, we then have the abundance of poorly taken photographs that are claimed to be the 'proof'.

Orbs often appear in photographs when some airborne dust particles, moisture or insects are outside the depth of field of the camera and the flash is a few degrees away from the axis of the camera lens. This in turn causes the object to be displayed as a semi-transparent brightly light but very out of focus ball of light. If you want a great step-by-step guide on how to take orb photographs, try taking a look at assap.org and click on 'Paranormal Photos' (http://www.assap.org/newsite/htmlfiles/Photos.html). There you will find all the information that you could ever need to reproduce these orb pictures.

Now many ghost hunting websites out there have stopped publishing orb photos on their websites. One can only speculate that they have at last seen reason or it may be just that they are sick of getting the flack for their misguided beliefs. However, there are still the hardened believers out there that will not accept any other explanation and still feel that there are legitimate orb photos. Over the years I have heard many Orb believers that accept that dust and moisture could cause false orbs, but they state in their defence that the false orbs have a blue halo or edge whereas a real orb picture wont.

Sadly for the orb believer, this blue halo or edging is well known to photographers and is caused by nothing less than cheap, low quality optics and certain sensors within the camera. Another theory that I have come across is that orbs are not ghosts at all, rather that they are photographs of energy being transferred to the spirit or ghost. In the past I have read on one pro-orb website saying something like “the laws of physics say that energy would naturally take on the the shape of a sphere”, which anyone with a high school level of physics knowledge would know that energy is not a physical substance that appears as a glowing ball in photographs at all. In fact energy is nothing more than a measurement. So it confuses me as to what laws of physics they are talking about.

New Orb Theories - The New Way Of Thinking

With all these theories being shot down in flames, there may just be one last bastion of hope for the much debated orb. Allan, the co-founder of Ghost Science has come up with a very interesting orb theory that is actually plausible. Allan's theory is based upon the fourth state of matter (solid, liquid, gases, plasma) called plasma. Plasma is a conductive collection of charged particles, namely Ions, which act as a collective, a bit like the Borg from Star Trek (in other words, they work as one organism). Plasma makes up 99% of the visible universe, however, there are billions of different types of plasma and these have been placed into simple categories. The one we are are interested in has a large multi-scale structure, exerts a large electromagnetic field and operates at a near zero core operating temperature.

This type of plasma is commonly based in crystal state, however, there are also other forms of plasma that are carbon based which occur naturally as air ions are bombarded by dust particles found all around us in the air. What makes this interesting is that the electromagnetic field (EMF) of this type of plasma borders the Infrared side of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Allan's work in this field has led him to believe that there is another type of plasma that is similar to the type described above but the ionic bombardment of carbon based dust results in a new plasma class which maintains itself endothermically by using any electrical source which maintains a stable electromagnetic field. This method would mathematically give it a larger than normal EMF, however, despite the well known rumor that ghosts give off electromagnetic fields, this type of plasma would actually be using other sources of locally produced EMF fields and then distorting them like a cheap kettle on a houses wiring circuits to help create the manifestation.

The plasma would be attracted to sources of High EMF but repelled by high temperatures. Allan estimates theory fits an orbs description perfectly as it would be most commonly found at night when air temperatures are lower but ground temperatures are higher. The resulting orb would dash about wildly as a result of such thermal differences and electromagnetic attraction.
The orbs internal electromagnetic field would be close to the Infrared end of the spectrum which would result in Infrared anomalies when using imaging equipment such as video cameras, and as the orb has a cold core, it would cause a cold feeling when someone is in close proximity to it.

Further spikes on a ghost hunters EMF meter would only be the result of additional 'drain' from other sources of electromagnetic fields in close proximity and would cause anomalies to such fields because of the unstable nature of plasma.