A Test That Debunks the “Moving Orbs Are Bugs” Nonsense

I was looking at a skeptic's web page the other day, one trying to explain the phenomenon of speeding orbs (you can see more than 600 examples of such speeding orbs here and in this set of videos). The skeptic's web page was full of nonsense and fallacies.

The skeptic started by giving a picture to supposedly show how a blue speeding orb could naturally appear. But the picture was produced through a most ridiculous procedure. A falling short fiber strand was photographed while a flashlight was held up to the camera lens – a flashlight that had a blue filter. Of course, such a procedure proves nothing. None of my 600+ photos of speeding orbs was taken while a flashlight was held up to the camera, and I never have used any kind of colored lens filter or colored light that might cause something that is not blue to look blue. And there are not fiber strands falling in front of my camera when I photograph.

Of course, since such a photo is irrelevant to explaining photos of speeding orbs, the skeptic offered another attempt at a natural explanation: that speeding orbs may be caused by insects. This explanation (and other proposed explanations for speeding orbs) is thoroughly debunked in this post.

The skeptic proposes that an insect can move at three meters per second. That's an overestimate. The speed of the house fly is five miles per hour, which is only two meters per second. Now, if you used a digital camera to take a flash photo of an object moving at two meters per second, would this produce some kind of trail of motion or double image or “string of pearls” effect that might look a little like a speeding orb? Certainly not.

The photo below proves the point. I took some little Cheerios about the size of a fly, and threw them toward a wall. The photo below captures the Cheerios in motion (with their shadows), moving at about three meters per second. The flash photo was taken with a cheap point-and-click camera, using no special settings. 

Notice that we see no trail of motion or double image or “string of pearls” effect  -- nothing resembling the dramatic "string of pearls" effect shown in these 72 photos. The Cheerios are simply caught frozen in motion. The same thing would happen if a moving fly were to be photographed. You might get a little motion blur if you photographed without a flash, but that's irrelevant, since all of my 600+ speeding orb photos were taken with a flash, which causes an effective shutter speed of about 1/1000 of a second.

There are three other reasons why “bugs in motion” is a completely absurd explanation for my photos of speeding orbs:

1. Bugs are not round, and would not appear as round orbs in photos taken with a digital camera.
2. The main type of flying insect someone might photograph in my city is a fly, which is black colored. None of my photos of speeding orbs show anything looking black or even dark gray. Instead they show orbs that are white, blue, orange, green, or pink. Mosquitoes are not as black as flies, but they travel at a much smaller speed of only 1.5 miles per hour, making them even more implausible as a source of speeding orbs in photos.
3. None of my 600+ photos of speeding orbs was taken during any hour during which I saw any flying insects. I almost never observe flying insects where I live (New York City), seeing them than less 1 in 10 days, partly because I live on the seventh floor. I have observed a flying insect only one time in hundreds of hours of photographing in Grand Central Terminal.

Clearly the “moving orbs are insects” idea is nonsense. Our skeptic has forgot the elementary principle that to try to explain something in a photo, you propose some cause that bears at least some slight resemblance to what was photographed. If you do a Google image search for “fly in motion” or “insect in motion” you will find no image that resembles a speeding orb. The only way to get an image of an insect looking anything like a speeding orb is to use a cheap security video camera, and freeze frame an image from that, perhaps after dabbling some honey near the camera to attract insects. Such an image does nothing to explain flash photos taken with a digital camera.

Postscript: Another way to do such a test is to place your camera on a little base in front of a bowl, and then drop Cheerios from a distance of about a meter above the camera. This will cause the Cheerios to accelerate to a speed of about 4 meters per second, twice the speed of a house fly.  Below is a photo taken through such a method.  The fly-sized Cheerio particle was falling directly in front of the camera lens, at twice the speed of a house fly. We see nothing resembling a speeding orb.

A better procedure is to try the same thing using raisins rather than Cheerios, because a raisin will match the black color of a house fly. Below is a flash photo using such a technique. Dropped from a height of one meter, the raisin was falling directly in front of the camera lens, and was falling at twice the speed of a house fly. We see nothing resembling a speeding orb. In this case we can see that using a flash on a dark object will not at all cause it to become white-colored.  The photo shows the falling raisin and its shadow.

We can summarize the case against insects as an explanation for moving orbs by saying that flying insects are the wrong speed, the wrong shape, and the wrong color.

When Skeptics Engage in Deceptive Cheating

The claim that orbs are caused by dust in front of the camera is untenable for quite a few reasons. One reason is that thousands of orb photos show orbs that are too big to be dust, too bright to be dust, too colorful to be dust, too fast-moving to be dust, too often striped to be dust, and too frequently observed in very clean air to be dust.

Another reason (discussed more fully here) is that suspended dust particles are many times too small to produce orbs. The area right in front of a camera lens has an area of about 100 million microns, but

a suspended indoor dust particle is no more than about 10 microns (giving it an area of 100 microns). So an indoor suspended dust particle will only be able to block one millionth of the area in front of the camera. Such a particle is a thousand times too small to explain orbs that may appear as 10% of the original photo height or sometimes much larger (see here for 60+ examples of such large orbs).

If suspended dust particles were big enough to produce orbs, everyone would get orbs in almost every flash photo they took. But instead 99% of all photographers get no orbs, and those with a prolonged interest in orbs get them in great abundance (a fact utterly inexplicable under the theory that orbs are tiny dust particles). The fact that 99% of all photos on any randomly selected topic you search for (such as “my cat” or “my house”) do not show orbs is definitive disprove against the claim that the dust in ordinary air is sufficient to produce orbs in ordinary photos. And almost all orb photographs are taken in ordinary air.

Anyone trying to explain orbs through any orb-zone “orbs are dust” theory is like someone trying to explain the strange death of 10 children by suggesting that the nitrogen gas in our atmosphere is poisonous. That theory doesn't work, because if the atmosphere were poisonous, everyone would be dead. Similarly, it doesn't work to claim that dust particles in ordinary air cause orbs, because if that were true everyone would get orbs in most of their flash photos.

Skeptics have some videos out there trying to back up their claim that orbs are dust. One I watched was the most ridiculous thing imaginable. It showed a man pouring handfuls of dust in front of the camera, which caused some dust orbs to arise. Of course, such a procedure is absurd, because when you do that you are creating utterly unnatural conditions completely different from the ordinary conditions under which orb photos are taken.

A more recent page by a skeptic organization is more subtle. The page shows a video showing a closeup view of dust particles in front of a high-intensity flashlight. Such an experiment is laughable because it involves an utterly artificial setup completely different from the actual conditions under which photographers such as me (and countless other orb photographers) photograph orbs. I never use close-up macro mode, and never add any type of light other than an ordinary camera-flash. Plus when I photograph I am never shooting towards some high-intensity light near the camera, but am shooting out at the scene in front of me, such as a street or a room. The photographs I take of falling water drops (which I identify as such) do not involve any special illumination (just the camera flash).

So it is for other people's orb photographs, which show orbs in front of an external scene such as someone's living room or someone's house. No orb photographer is taking closeup photos zooming into the area just in front of some high-intensity light.

I was curious – if you try taking flash photos in front of a high-beam flashlight, using the setup in the skeptic's experiment, is that sufficient to cause dust particles to produce orbs in your photos? The photos below gives the answer: orbs do not appear in flash photos taken under such conditions.

Such a result is entirely different from the result shown in the skeptic experiment, where we see lots and lots of big dust particles in front of the flashlight. There is only one way to explain this. The experimenter must have raised the dust level much higher than normal, by doing something like throwing dust around or shaking a dusty cloth near the camera. Such a procedure is utterly deceptive. It creates the completely false impression that the air we are breathing is very dusty air full of big dust particles.

Imagine if someone were to publish a video entitled “The Scary Filthy Air of New York City,” by raising lots of dust and photographing it with a high-intensity flashlight. That would be utterly deceptive, because the air in New York City is hundreds of times cleaner than it would appear in such a video. Similarly, it would be utterly deceptive to drop some dirt from your house plant into a glass of water, and to then publish a photo or video of that, with a title “The Filthy Tap Water of New York City.”

The procedure followed by these orb skeptics is every bit as deceptive and misleading as the videos imagined above. After decades of environmental studies, the size of dust particles in ordinary air is a well-established fact. Not counting freak conditions, such particles get no bigger than about 10 microns. A particle 10 microns in size has an area of 100 microns, and will block no more than one millionth of the area in front of a camera lens (which is about 100 million microns, or 100 millimeters). Such a size is way, way too small to produce a decent-sized orb in a photo. To try to create an opposite idea – that the air we breathe is very dusty – by raising lots of dust and photographing that with high-intensity flashlights is just pure deception and cheating.

2 Replications of the Oatmeal "Mind Over Matter" Experiment

In this post I reported on a "mind over matter" experiment I did with oatmeal, similar to the "mind over matter" experiments on rice originally done by Masuru Emoto. The Emoto-style rice experiments have been widely replicated, as you can see by doing a Google search for "Emoto rice experiment."  My first experiment was supportive of the "mind over matter" hypothesis. Below is a report of two simultaneously run experiments attempting to replicate this result.

On July 21, 2015 I prepared some oatmeal in a bowl that had been well-washed. I took four small glass jars, and steam-sterilized them. Having previously discovered that you can ruin lids of this type of jar if you try to steam sterilize them, I merely washed the lids in soap and hot water.

After waiting a few minutes for the sterilized jars to cool, I then spooned freshly made oatmeal into the jars, alternating which jar got a spoonful of oatmeal. When I was done, I tightly sealed the jars, labeling two of them with a "Love" label, and two of them with a "Hate" label. Below is the first set of jars.

The second set of jars looked like this:

For six days I would (several times a day) hold the small jars in my hand. To the jars marked "Hate" I would say things like, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you -- die, die, die," while trying to feel strong feelings of hate. To the jars marked "Love" I would say, "I love you, I love you, I love you -- thank you, thank you," while trying to feel positive thoughts.

Below are the results of the two experiments (which I call experiments 2 and 3 because they are the second and third experiments I've done on oatmeal).

Experiment 2

After 6 days the jar marked "Love" had only slightly changed, having a slightly more liquid appearance. But the jar marked "Hate" had changed dramatically. Not only had it almost completely liquefied, but it had also changed color, turning into a kind of muddy brown color quite different from the original color.  The two jars are shown below (in a photo taken on the day the 6-day experiment ended).

Experiment 3

After 6 days the jar marked "Love" had little noticeable change. It still looked like good "spoonable" oatmeal that someone might eat without complaint. But the jar marked "Hate" had changed dramatically. Its color had not changed, but it had almost completely liquefied. The two jars are shown below (in a photo taken on the day the 6-day experiment ended).

Summary of the 3 Experiments


Below is a summary of the 3 experiments done thus far on this topic.

Oatmeal Experiment Number	Dates	Results	Supports “Mind Over Matter” Hypothesis?
1	July 16-July 21, 2015	The oatmeal in the jar marked “Hate” almost entirely liquefied, but the oatmeal in the jar marked “Love” did not liquefy, and did not change appearance.	Yes
2	July 21- July 27, 2015	The oatmeal in the jar marked “Hate” almost entirely liquefied and also changed to a muddy brown color, but the oatmeal in the jar marked “Love” did not change color and only slightly liquefied.	Yes
3	July 21- July 27, 2015	The oatmeal in the jar marked “Hate” almost entirely liquefied, but the oatmeal in the jar marked “Love” did not liquefy, and had little change in appearance.	Yes

What are the odds of getting these results by chance? Imagine we estimate probabilities such as these, which seem reasonable.

Chance of both jars not looking significantly different from each other at end of experiment (with or without changes): 80%.
Chance of the oatmeal in the "Love" jar looking significantly worse than the oatmeal in the "Hate" jar:  10%.
Chance of the oatmeal in the "Hate" jar looking significantly worse than the oatmeal in the "Love" jar:  10%.

Given such probabilities, the chance of doing this experiment 3 times and getting each time a result suggestive of "mind over matter" (with the oatmeal in the "Hate" jar looking significantly worse than the oatmeal in the "Love" jar) is 10% multiplied by 10% multiplied by 10%, or about 1 in 1000.

So these results so far are rather suggestive of the "mind over matter" hypothesis, but I would need to do additional experiments before I could claim to have any evidence that is highly suggestive of such a hypothesis.

Postscript: All of the jars in these experiments were stored in the same place,  in a dresser drawer. The jars were held for equal lengths of time, and handled in the same way. None of the jars were shaken during the experiment.

Recreating the Emoto Rice Experiment, Using Oatmeal Instead

You can find on the Internet many posts and Youtube videos on the experiments on rice originally done by Masuru Emoto.  The experiments attempt to show whether there will be a difference between two identical samples of rice, one of which is exposed to negative thoughts, and the other exposed to positive thoughts.

I decided to try the experiment myself, using oatmeal instead of rice.

On July 16, 2015 I prepared some oatmeal in a bowl that had been well-washed. I took two small jars, and steam-sterilized them. (The first time I tried this it worked okay to steam sterilize the small jar lids, but upon just trying a few minutes ago to redo the experiment, I ruined the jar lids while trying to steam-sterilize them. So if you want to try this, I recommend not sterilizing the jar lids if they are small.)

After waiting a few minutes for the sterilized jars to cool, I then spooned the freshly made oatmeal into the jars, alternating which jar got a spoonful of oatmeal. When I was done, I tightly sealed the jars. They then looked like this. The jars had identical amounts of oatmeal. One jar was marked "Hate," the other "Love."

For five days I would (several times a day) hold the small jars in my hand. To the one marked "Hate" I would say, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you -- die, die, die," while trying to feel strong feelings of hate. To the one marked "Love" I would say, "I love you, I love you, I love you -- thank you, thank you."

After 5 days there was a very dramatic difference between the two. The oatmeal in the jar marked "Hate" had almost entirely liquefied.  It no longer looked like oatmeal, but instead like some not-very-thick milk shake. No one would ever eat the contents if he was expecting oatmeal (and if he did, he would need a straw rather than a spoon). But the contents in the jar marked "Love" showed no visible changes.

The photo below shows the jars after 5 days. You can see the difference between the liquid state in the "Hate" jar on the left and the oatmeal in the "Love" jar on the right, which was still "spoonable" oatmeal.

I will continue to do experiments on this topic. The experimental result thus far is suggestive of an anomalous unexplained ability of the human mind to affect matter.

You can find many similar results on the Internet by doing a Google search for "Emoto rice experiment." By all means, check out the skeptical debunking posts on this topic, but also take note of how lacking they are in substance.  A typical "debunking" will consist of procedural complaints lacking in substance or relevance, such as a post that vacuously complains about the experimenter failing to write down exactly which words were spoken to the jars each time they were spoken (something hardly necessary if the same words are being spoken each time).

Statistical Evidence Suggesting Paranormal Orbs

 Photo date: March 26, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

Orbs are unusual circular anomalies that appear in photos like the photo below. In previous posts I have done experiments debunking the "orb zone theory" -- the claim that orbs can be explained as flash reflections of dust particles near the camera lens. My tests showed that even when you raise heavy dust, you merely get small, dull, faint orbs unlike any of the more dramatic orbs shown on this site (which are so often big, bright, colorful, fast-moving or having what looks likes faces).

In this post I will discuss an entirely different type of experiment: a statistical experiment. The experiment will be done purely by analyzing a series of photographs taken on a particular day. In the experiment I will be looking for a certain type of “location bias” that we would not at all expect to see if orbs are just dust.

To explain this idea, let me first show a photo of the main terminal of Grand Central Station in New York as observed from one side of the East Balcony (the side opposite the US flag). The view looks like the one shown below. The strange blue items at the top are orbs.

You will notice that there is a row of lights that stretches roughly through the middle of the photo We can consider this row of lights as a divider. We can consider the area above the row of lights as the “upper area” of a photograph of the terminal made from this angle, and the area below the row of lights as the “lower area” of such a photograph of the terminal.

Now under the hypothesis that orbs are just dust, should we expect to see orbs more often in the upper area of photos like the one above, or in the lower area of such photos? Under such a hypothesis, there should be little or no difference between the frequency of orbs seen in the upper area and in the lower area. The theory that orbs are dust holds that the photographer is photographing little particles of dust floating around very close to the camera. If that theory is true, we should not at all expect to see orbs appearing much more frequently in the upper area of photographs like the photo shown above.

Consequently I had a nice opportunity for a statistical test. My procedure was as follows:

1. Using the photographs that I had taken on March 26, 2015, I selected all that were taken from the same angle as the angle in the photograph shown at the beginning of this post. I threw out a few of these photographs which did not show a roughly equal amount of “lower area” and “upper area.” The row of lights in the terminal was used as the dividing line between the upper area and the lower area. I was then left with a set of 158 photos.
2. I examined each such photograph, and judged whether the total surface area of orbs shown in the photo was greater in the upper area or the lower area. If it seemed hard to tell whether the surface area of the orbs in the lower area was more or less than the surface area of the orbs in the upper area, or if no orbs were shown in the photo, I made no judgment regarding that photo.

The results were as follows: 106 of the photographs were judged to have a greater amount of “orb surface area” in either the upper area or the lower area (as defined above).  Of these 106 photos, 101 had a greater amount of “orb surface area” in the upper area, the area above the row of lights. Only five of the photos had a greater amount of "orb surface area" in the lower area, the area below the row of lights.

The table below summarizes these results.

Photos showing no orbs or no clear difference between the total surface area of orbs in the upper part of the photo and the total surface area of orbs in the lower part of the photo	52
Photos showing orbs in the upper part of the photo having a higher total surface area than the total surface area of orbs in the lower part of the photo	101
Photos showing orbs in the lower part of the photo having a higher total surface area than the total surface area of orbs in the upper part of the photo.	5

To put it succinctly, on this day (March 26, 2015) the abundant orbs in my photos seemed to appear much, much more commonly in the upper area of my photos.

Now how unlikely is it to have got a result such as I have just described, purely by chance? It's about the same as the chance of you flipping a coin 106 times, and getting 101 heads. If only chance was involved, and if orbs are just dust, then each of the photograph examinations I made (listed in the last two rows of the table above) should have been like a coin flip, with about a 50% chance of observing more orbs above the “row of lights” dividing line, and a 50% chance of observing more orbs below this dividing line.

But is there any way to calculate the chance of such a thing happening? Yes, there is a convenient online calculator we can use. The calculator is on this page at the stattrek.com website. The calculator uses a binomial probability calculation to estimate the odds.

The screen shot below shows the result I got when I typed the relevant numbers into the calculator.

The answer given by the calculator is that there is a 0% likelihood of getting these results by chance. The binomial probability (stated above in exponential notation) is calculated as about 1 chance in a trillion trillion (1 chance in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).

So we have our answer to the question about odds. There is essentially zero chance that you might flip a coin 106 times and get 101 heads. There is also essentially zero chance that I would have got the results I got, under the theory that orbs are produced by flash reflections of dust floating in front of the camera. The statistical evidence I have presented here is extremely strong evidence against such a theory. The orbs in my photos at this location on this day were showing a very strong tendency to “preferentially” appear in the upper half of the photo area. Such a fact is powerful evidence against the theory that these orbs are produced by random particles of dust floating in the air. 

Postscript: The 106 photos I mentioned (all from the same angle and location) showed orbs appearing in a great variety of photo positions, with each photo showing a unique set of positions for the orbs, and with the orbs appearing much more frequently in the top area of the photos. Quite a few of these photos will be shown in future posts on this blog. 

Yet Another Experiment Debunking the "Orbs Are Just Dust" Idea

Photo date: March 20, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The site www.youtube.com has some videos attempting to debunk orbs. One incredibly silly video features a skeptic pouring huge amounts of dust directly in front of the camera, with the suggestion that this technique can be used to show that orbs are just dust. The approach suggested is, of course, utterly ridiculous.  The people who photograph orbs and post them to the Internet as unexplained mysteries are photographing orbs in ordinary air, and are not at all photographing orbs in any condition bearing the least resemblance to a condition in which dust is poured in front of the camera.  One cannot explain a phenomenon by using testing conditions totally different from the conditions under which the phenomenon was observed.

A somewhat less ridiculous video shows an experiment in which someone crinkles a wad of dry toilet paper in front of a camera. This method is also objectionable, because virtually never does any one photograph orbs under such a condition, with little specks of dust falling directly in front of the camera.  But I decided to give this test a try, just to see whether anything would show up bearing significant resemblance to the orbs that I have produced in my photographs. No such thing happened.

I  took 82 flash photos while crinkling some dry toilet paper in front of a dark background, as shown below (the little white specks at the top are falling pieces of dust).

The test does produce a few dust orbs, but none of the 82 photos showed any type of orb that an intelligent person would ever post to the Internet as an example of a possibly paranormal orb or an unexplained mystery. The only orbs that were produced were small, dull, and colorless. All were pale-looking looking little things without any brightness, and without any color other than white or gray. None had interesting outer rings, and none appeared to have faces. None of these dust orbs was  any larger than about 5 percent of the photo height.  These dust orbs typically had blurred edges quite different from the sharp outer edges shown in very many orb photos on this site.  There was no sign of any motion other than the ordinary motion of a falling particle.

A typical example is shown below (and most of the photos showed nothing):

This experiment shows that even when one is causing dust to fall directly in front of the camera lens, this still does not produce orbs anything like the dramatic orbs shown on this site, which are so often bright or large or colorful or having outer rings or facial characteristics or seeming to move in inexplicable ways.

See this post, this post,  and this post for similar tests with similar results.  The "orb zone theory" is one that does not stand up to scrutiny, and is also an idea that is incompatible with a little thing called the law of gravity.  The law of gravity tells us that dust very rapidly settles to the ground, the same thing that one actually observes when one raises dust and uses an electronic dust detector to measure how quickly dust settles. The idea that ordinary air is filled with particles of dust sufficient to create dramatic photo anomalies is a fantasy.  Typical, ordinary air at camera level has very little dust, and that invisible dust is not sufficient to show up in flash photos, partially because dust is not a very reflective material.

The "Orb Zone Theory" Flunks Another Test

Photo date: March 13, 2015.  Photographer: Mark Mahin.

In a previous post I described two experiments I performed that discredit the "orbs are dust" theory (sometimes called the orb zone theory) -- the theory that orbs are mainly caused by little particles of dust a few inches from the camera. This post describes an experiment with a similar result.

I took 80 photos while pouring a very fine cinnamon powder a few inches from the camera.

My electronic dust monitor showed that this was degrading the quality of the air. The second number on the monitor is typically  only between 1 and 10, but during this test that number spiked up to be 206.

But even though I took 80 pictures pouring all this dust-like cinnamon powder right next to the camera, not a single decent orb appeared in my photos (certainly nothing that anyone would ever post to the internet as an example of an orb).

Again, this "orb zone theory" completely flunks the test. Having taken many photographs of orbs, often when measuring the air quality with the dust monitor above, I can say with great confidence that (with the exception of poured dust or odorous dust or dust conditions so dense that it impedes visibility or causes you to cough), there is simply no correlation between dust levels and the frequency with which orbs appear in photographs -- which shows that the "orb zone  theory" is untenable, and that the more interesting photos of orbs are not generally caused by dust.

This test also showed another thing discrediting the "orbs are dust" theory -- the fact that when dust levels are raised because of a particular event that doesn't continue, the dust levels very rapidly fall as dust settles. In this case the measured air quality (as indicated by second number on the monitor) improved by 300% within a few minutes after I stopped pouring the cinnamon.  Dust spikes are almost always very short-lived things, but I routinely get orbs appearing though a photographic session lasting an hour or more -- a fact that indicates that dust is not the main cause of the appearance of orbs.

Water Vapor Test Debunks Another Natural Explanation for Orbs

When skeptics try to debunk dramatic orb photos like the ones shown on this site, they usually suggest that orbs are just dust. This hypothesis doesn't work, because so many of the orbs shown on this site are either too big to be dust, too bright to be dust, too fast-moving to be dust, too colorful to be dust, too regularly observed to be dust, too surrounded by clean air to be dust, or too closely resembling faces to be dust.  In the case of numerous photos on this site, several of these "can't be dust" conditions apply at the same time.

There is also the fact that virtually all of the orb photos shown on this site were taken in places that were not at all dusty. The photos in Grand Central Station were taken at a very clean balcony area, directly facing a huge mass of clear air, about 10 meters above pedestrians. Grand Central Station has a very efficient air filtration system that keeps its air very clean. We cannot plausibly imagine that at such a location you would have enough dust for dust to produce frequent orbs.

I previously tried 2 tests of the "orbs are dust" theory, and in both cases it flunked utterly. In one I took lots of photos while raising very heavy dust while cleaning a hair-entangled vacuum cleaner chamber, but all I was able to get were a few tiny, pale, orbs looking nothing like the dramatic orbs on this site.  See also this post which contrasts a case of 10 orbs seen in dust-free air,  and no orbs seen in very dusty air -- another case that debunks the idea that dust can explain the more dramatic orb photos.  See also the 9 photos on this site labeled "air orb too distant to be dust" and the 8 photos labeled "air orb too large to be dust" (as well as the 19 posts labeled "inexplicable orb motion," which show orbs moving in ways that dust never does).

But what about other possible natural explanations for orbs? Skeptics offer ideas such as reflection, water vapor, and pollen.

Reflection of ordinary light from a camera flash cannot explain orbs, as I show in the test described in this post.  In that test I took many photos trying to maximize reflections from a camera flash, by using multiple mirrors. But still no orbs resulted when this was done. It is true that if one points a camera at a very bright light (like the sun or a very bright spotlight), one can get lens flare, which can produce some natural orbs. But that cannot explain any photos on this site, since none of the photos were taken facing a bright light.

The pollen hypothesis is basically just a variation of the dust hypothesis, so it has all the same weaknesses, plus the additional weakness that one gets appreciable pollen only during two or three months outdoors (most commonly April and May). So pollen is worthless in explaining indoor photos, particularly indoor photos taken during winter (such as many photos I have already published here).

But what about water vapor -- could that explain orbs?  Could it be that when we see an orb we are just seeing a reflection from a speck of water vapor in the air?  To test this theory, I tried a test that is very easy to repeat. I let the shower in my bathroom run hot water for 7 minutes, until the bathroom filled with steam.

I then took 14 flash photos like the one above, to see if any orbs might show up because of the increased water vapor. But not a single orb appeared in any of the photos.

While water vapor may be an explanation for some orbs photographed outdoors in misty or rainy conditions, the test here shows that water vapor cannot explain orbs photographed indoors (unless one is taking photos in a steam bath or sauna, perhaps).

So the water vapor hypothesis fails as miserably as the other attempts to naturally explain the more dramatic photos of orbs, such as those posted here and on many other Internet sites.

Postscript: Later I took 67 photos, each made just after a plant sprayer was sprayed near the camera lens, with the sprayer set to produce a fine mist.  This type of test is not relevant to indoor conditions, since it produces air water so thick that water visibly accumulates on the ground; and no indoor spot (except something very unusual like a steam bath) has such conditions. But such a test may be relevant in simulating outdoor conditions of extreme dampness.

But even in this case, there were no results relevant to explaining any of the more dramatic orb photos. The photos showed lots of tiny round water vapor orbs, but the only colors were gray, white, or brownish. There were none of the dramatic orb colors shown on this site (pink, purple, green, blue, orange, and yellow).  None of these "mist orbs" was bright, none showed any sign of motion, and none of them was larger than about 3% of the original photo size.  So even a very thick "light rain" type of water vapor cannot explain photos of big orbs or bright orbs or colorful orbs or fast moving orbs, many examples of which can be found on this site. But I would recommend anyone trying to photograph orbs outdoors to try to avoid rainy or misty weather, and to describe the weather conditions when posting a photo of an orb anomaly.

The photos were taken of water mist using an ordinary camera showing a 3 foot wide area. If you "zoom in" the lens of a camera, and go into the "macro mode" used for closeup photography, it is possible to get closeup photographs of water mist droplets larger than 3%  of the photo size. But such conditions are so extreme (both in the camera setting and in the fact that you are spraying mist right in front of the camera) that they have no relevance in explaining orb photos.

10 Orbs in Dust-Free Air

Photo date: November 17, 2014. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

At the time this indoor photo of a clean, featureless wall was taken, an air quality monitor showed the air quality was very good, with a reading of  43/2 (anything below 50 is "very good" air according to the monitor's back plate). Dust cannot account for the image, because the air was too clean for dust to be a plausible explanation.   The image below was color-adjusted using the "Auto-adjust colors" menu option in the IrfanView program.

Reflective surfaces nearby: none. No orbs were seen in photos shortly before and shortly after this picture was taken, which argues against any dust explanation. No insects observed at the photo site.

Below is a flash photograph I took on February 23, 2015 while vacuuming. It shows the same air quality monitor I used to get the  November 17th reading. At the time I took this photo on  February 23, the dust level was very high, rising to 880/382 (which is "Poor" according to the plate on the back of the machine, and almost "very poor").

Below is a closeup showing the reading:

Now in the photo above showing the monitor in very dusty air, there were no orbs visible. There were also no orbs visible in four other photographs taken at the same time. But there were orbs visible in the first photograph, when the air was very clean, with a reading of only 43/2 ("very good" air, according to the back plate of my monitor).

So if we often do see quite a few orbs in flash photos when the air has no dust, but we often don't see orbs in flash photos taken when there is lots of dust in the air, how much credibility does the "orb zone" theory have, the theory that orbs are just dust?  None at all.

Experiments Creating Dust Orbs

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 70^th 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.