Monday, September 15, 2008

Orbs and their reality (or ours)

Reading an article about orbs, the mysterious lights sometimes appearing in photographs, I was reminded of how little we know of the world surrounding us. Let's face it: Despite using fancy words like quantum shift, planes of existence, perichoresis and particle index of refraction, our perception of the reality surrounding us is at best fuzzy. Orbs could be the most overlooked phenomenon ever, providing glimpses on the 11th universe impaling our own, according to the m-theory of quantum physics. Or they could be little windows to the Middle Kingdom, the home of the Faery. Or they could be the souls of the dead. Or they could be tiny short-lived portals. Or they could be anything.
Most likely they could be particles of dust catching the light, but that cannot be proven either. Oh the irony. Being an image professional, I have never seen a lens that can focus on a couple of meters, and still show the intricate detail of an object millimeters from the lens in all its fractal beauty. Or a flash bulb that can make a dust particle shine like a small sun but still leave white objects semi-dark. Or dust that can refract light and create a lens flare, where sources of light fail to do so.
I know nothing conclusive about orbs, but it seems that nobody else does anyway..
Image and explanation (if you like) at http://www.diepart.com/164401.html

UPDATE: Follow-up on orbs: http://t-incognita.blogspot.com/2010/10/orbs-and-invisible-thread.html

43 comments:

Jimbo said...

Just ask politicians and musicians (provided via their logos); nothing cooler than concentric circles.

Illuminatus said...

Good point.. I'll have to remember that..

Unknown said...

Oh those orbs! Because there really is no way to tell one way or the other, it's better just to keep it a mystery and focus on other stuff; like in Ghost Hunters, the infra-red camera pictures are always way cooler than orbs, and are the best evidence for something out there. Though it is likely that being the most energy efficient shape, our souls are orbs (hopefully much bigger than dust!).

Illuminatus said...

Mmmm. Not much bigger than dust. 21 grams comes to mind, although it sounds a bit heavy for an orb..

Unknown said...

MANY PEOPLE SPEAK OF FLOATING ABOVE THERE DEATH BEDS AND SEEING THERE SELF MAYBE OUR SOULS FLOAT BECAUSE THEY ARE LIKE BUBBLES SO TO SPEAK

Anonymous said...

Sorry folks,
Orbs are humidity. Ever took pictures while sitting in the hot-tub?
And those geometric shapes, including arcs and circles are a product of digital photography.

Illuminatus said...

I am sorry my anonymous friend, but I have to disagree.. Humidity is too simple a solution for such a complex problem.. First thing that comes to mind is that humidity, either on the lens surface or in the inside stays in the same place. Orbs however tend to be different in every photo with the same lens...
And as for digital photography, trust me when I tell you I know every artifact produced by every compression codec and imaging device. The rule here is square artifacts, usually 8x8 pixels.. No exceptions.
take care :)

Anonymous said...

Orb's are real!!! I think I am the only person that knows this,because I am the only person I know who has ever seen an Orb with the naked eye. I was declared dead at the site of the accident, 1/24/07. Just before I hit the ground I seen two Orbs fly by me,about knee high, very very fast. They left a stream of light as they flew by, and I notice that in the center of the Orb was hair just the same color of my mother and father hair. (burnt orange)I have never heard of Orbs before this and it was another month before I ever heard that word or ever seen an Orb. I was discribing it as a disc, about the size of a hocky puck, Then one day five months after the accident some one was talking about Orbs and I asked what is an Orb and he pulled it up on the computer and I couldn't believe that it was exactly what I seen the day I was hit. I am looking to here from anyone else who has seen ORB's with the naked eye.please contact me, because there is alot more to this story, and only some one who has seen would understand.

Illuminatus said...

Wow. I never heard of someone actually seeing an orb with their eyes, albeit in a near death experience. The reference to your parents is also very interesting. The possibilities.. Souls, guardian angels, watchers, aliens.
Us, ultimately..
Glad you lived to tell the tale.

Anonymous said...

I am seeing these in my photos more and more lately and NOW I can see erratic floating/hovering orbs in my baby's nursery, around him on the night monitor, it's happened a few times now. No, not a bug or dust ball, this thing floats, hovers, and then zooms, weird!

Illuminatus said...

Does your baby camera have infrared capabilities? That would give us a clue as to the area of the spectrum orbs occupy. If you could record the video, I would very much like to see it.
Best

Anonymous said...

I believe in Orbs. I didn't notice them until I was taking pictures around my mother's death bed. I saw them there first, and now I see them a lot in my photo's. I also had a stream of light pass by my face while entering a dark room. If you zoom up close on your orb photo's, a lot of these orbs have expressions or faces. I also caught a bunch of orbs on the Queen Mary by the haunted pool. I believe.

Anonymous said...

In responce to the person with the near death experience, I see orbs in person very often, with my naked eye. I also see spirits.

My friends take me along for ghost hunts because they believe I have heightened ability to see spirits and I draw them out. We have many intereseting photos, untreated and unfaked.

Anonymous said...

I was running on my birthday through my neighborhood in Tucson in the middle of a school day almost six years ago. I saw what I thought was a soap bubble hovering about waist-high in the middle of the street. It seemed odd that it would be there, so I ran up to it and stopped to watch it. It appeared clear and did not have the prism of colors that you would see on a soap bubble in the sunlight. I could not see or hear that anyone was around. The bubble hovered for awhile--seemed almost to be observing me--then flew straight up about fifteen feet and then to my right over the roof of a house. I found out later that day that my husband's stepfather had died. My husband was very close to him, and I also adored him. A few weeks later,I found out that I was pregnant, even though I had decided to tell my husband that I did not want to have another child. The due date indicated that I had conceived on my birthday.

About seven years before that, I was running in a zig-zag pattern through another neighborhood in Tucson, taking in the historic sights. I saw an elderly lady walking down the road, looking intently in the sky. I looked in that direction and saw a whitish blob floating through the tops of tall Eucalyptus trees. I thought maybe it was a grocery bag being carried in the wind. But that didn't quite explain it, so I followed it. It eventually lowered to about six feet above the rooftops, then hovered. It was not spherical, but more of a cylindrical blob that changed shape--kind of like an amoeba, but the size of a breadbox. It also appeared to be neither gas nor liquid, but a little bit of both, with a whitish luminescense. Again, I felt like I was being "observed." Eventually it lowered down onto the roof of an opthamologist's office. I took that as a warning and had my eyes checked soon after. They were fine.

Illuminatus said...

All this leaves me with the impression that some people are kind of wired to see orbs. Or they are more observant than the rest of us.
Either way, it is interesting and I have a feeling it has a significance far greater than light play on dust....

Anonymous said...

yesterday the 27th jan, i just had my brother,s wake in the local club, many ppl had camera,s including myself, today my sister in law, phoned me ,to tell me she had orbs on her picture,s when we looked there was plenty of them on one picture she had 3 orbs, i looked on my camera ,and there above my grandson,s head was an orb, we cant wait for other family members to check there,s,the room must of been full of them,

Trish and Rob MacGregor said...

Fascinating comments here.

Justine said...

I recently spent the night with some friends in The Fort Garry Hotel. We had always heard it was haunted and wanted to see for ourselves. Although we came across nothing overly unusual during our stay, I later looked over the photos to find numerous white orbs (captured best with a flash) hovering around us in many of the photos. Most were gassy blobs of light which differed in size and shape, others detailed enough to make out clear facial features. These were definitely not dust or moisture bubbles! From now on I'll be keeping a closer eye on the pictures I take!

Very interesting stories!!!

Illuminatus said...

Hi Justine.
Facial features you say? I would really like to see that. The place was haunted after all...

Anonymous said...

I posted earlier about the floating blob in Tucson. Recently I have been helping my son with a science project and have been learning about non-Newtonian fluids and gases, which can also possess the properties of solids. Apparently the hallmark is that the particles in permanent suspension will glisten like tiny mirrors in light. That describes what I saw, but how / why it was there, I guess I'll never know. Because it was a neighborhood near the university, it is quite possible that it was some sort of student project / experiment. Non-Newtonian fluid and gas products are very common, but I have never seen anything else like that.

jim said...

"Despite using fancy words like quantum shift, planes of existence, perichoresis and particle index of refraction, our perception of the reality surrounding us is at best fuzzy."

I recommend "The User Illusion" by Tor Norretranders if you want some insight into just how skewed human reality is as compared to external reality. Orbs, schmorbs - the true nature of the universe is much weirder than any anomalous phenomenon any person has ever witnessed, hands down.

Illuminatus said...

Thanks Jim. I hadn't heard of that one. It is already on my Amazon Wish List!
In that frame of thought you can also read The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, and Phantoms In The Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, the latter being the most scientific, and also the creepier of the two.
I agree with you completely: The truth is weirder than any explanation, and I think we need new working paradigms to make some sense of the whole mess.
The words of Adam Weishaupt, "Everything you Know is Wrong" become more true everyday..

Anonymous said...

Well, my name is Joseph, i live in Croatia, and i have many many photo on the subject, orbs cought on picture by me and my future wife.In most cases, orbs are large and shiny, and i feel their energy as calm and as watching - my belief is that those things are all the glimpses of the "other side" - angels and our beloved, very near this dimension.There was a circle on the ground, circle of Fiery mushrooms( i dont know how you call this wenn a mushrooms formate a circle on the ground) - Try to put a person in that circle, and make photo. I am shore there will be few orbs cought on photo. For pictures, please mail me on : jozekmali@gmail.com

Unknown said...

http://www.photospace.co.nz/strange_guestphotos.htm

I try to stay open-minded about these things and do believe to a degree of paranormal activity, but come on..sometimes you just have to use common sense people!

Anonymous said...

about a year ago me my older brother and his freind went to the cematary to take pictures to look for orbs and in a picture the entire screen was red and in the center was what looked like an eye

my grandmas moms freind seen an orb she was 34 years old and while washing the dishes one day she seen a light in the bushes and she thought it was some teenagers pulling a prank so she went outside tosee what it was but as she got closer the orb got smaller and smaller and smaller until it dissapeared. this went on for about a week when she got very sick and died.

Illuminatus said...

Sara thanks for your comment and the link! Will post new stuff soon.

Anonymous said...

I see orbs all the time , I didn't realise it was so rare to see them. I have lots of fabulous pics as well.

I have one huge orb that I believe to be an angel , you can see the wings , its quite amazing.

Illuminatus said...

Feel free to send some pics so we can see them! :)
So you actually see orbs with the naked eye?

Anonymous said...

I would love to show you my pics , how do I post them ? do I need to create my own blog , I kind of found your blog by accident !

yes I do see them , although I am now doubting myself because it seems so extreme to see then with the naked eye.

A particular night a couple of weeks ago it was one of those very still eerie nights and I kept catching them in the sky as I stood in my garden. So I got my camera and started snapping and sure enough the photo's confirmed what I saw.

I would be very interested in your opinion now .

fudgy

Illuminatus said...

If you want you can click on Illuminatus to see my profile. On the left is an email link.. Just email them as attachments. I am very curious to see...

Anonymous said...

I thought my sister was nuts when she told me about orbs. She showed me a picture of them that she had taken when at her boyfriends house.I thought it was the camera. Then this year my niece took a picture of my son at his wedding day. There was three circles around him. I took a picture of him when I was vacationing in Washington. I also had got two cycles in the picture of my son. I do believe.
My mother is looking over him. She died last year of cancer. I witnessed her death and saw movement from the top of her head. It was creepy. Her spirit left her body. I have also had experiences with the smell of spirits on the walls. It smells like flowers. I experienced them after my father in law died and at my grandmothers house.

Anonymous said...

I thought my sister was nuts when she told me about orbs. She showed me a picture of them that she had taken when at her boyfriends house.I thought it was the camera. Then this year my niece took a picture of my son at his wedding day. There was three circles around him. I took a picture of him when I was vacationing in Washington. I also had got two cycles in the picture of my son. I do believe now that its spirits looking over us.
My mother is looking over him. She died last year of cancer. I witnessed her death and saw movement from the top of her head. It was creepy. Her spirit left her body. I have also had experiences with the smell of spirits on the walls. It smells like flowers. I experienced them after my father in law died and at my grandmothers house.

Anonymous said...

There was someone who said he could see orbs. And he wanted to know if anyone else could see them. I can see them but I can't see them straight on I can see them with my peripheral vision. They appear to be shadows moving. I usually take a picture and orbs appear on the picture. A couple of times I saw them looking straight at them-once when I was in a dark room I was trying to sleep and it was night. I heard the screen jiggle 3 times then again -when I looked up I saw two shadow-like orbs that hovered in one place then left the room together. (I think it has something to do with the light because in a dark room my eyes could see them) Then there was a time when I was watching tv and happened to look up and I saw this greenish thing floating above me-for some reason it terrified me, and I froze. I may have been able to see it because the tv acted like a camera flash-the light from the tv illuminated the orb and it picked up the color that was shown on the screen.I saw it float right to the window where it went through the crack to the outside. Once when I went into the kitchen I saw a very bright orb in back of a bottle of vinegar which caused it to be extremely bright gold.Once when my son came home after school he noticed that the bedroom door was almost closed but he saw this bright yellow light bouncing under the bed-as soon as he pushed the door open it was gone. (my son thought that it was his grandmother looking under the bed with a penlight) but when he pushed the door open nobody was there.

Illuminatus said...

Wow these are powerfull experiences, although technically what you see with your eyes is not an orb, but a different kind of phenomenon, usually described as "furry spheres" because of the shadowy, hairy quality of the texture.. But you got me thinking.. What if they are all part of the same phenomenon? Plus i've never heard of a photograph of one of those "dark orbs"..
See the newer post as well:
http://t-incognita.blogspot.com/2010/10/orbs-and-invisible-thread.html

Anonymous said...

Yes, I think they part of one thing too. I took a pictures of my son and my daughter and this spheres there. And my son seen by his side vision the shadows walks across the room. It was hapening few times too. I feel scared by it and want to anderstand how to avoid this! It bothering, aspessially we have nightmares (very scary) in this house.

Illuminatus said...

The fact that you have bad dreams and you can see them with your eyes means either that we are dealing with something other than Orbs, or that the phenomenon is of a much greater scale and strength than usual..
I can offer no solution, other than suggest two possible links: one to the location of the occurrences (your house), or to one of it's occupants. I know it is not much help, but if you start studying it, the details will help you get your mind at ease.
Read Leiber's A Piece of the Dark World. A good place to start.

The Happy Sceptic said...

SIGH! "orbs" are the result of auto focus cameras (which most are these days) automatically focusing prior to shooting. When something too small to focus on (dust, snowflake, cottonwood tree seeds, bugs) is in the frame it appears out of focus -- like a white sphere. Not spooky, not mysterious, not supernatural. But through history people have quickly assumed the supernatural for anything they didn't immediately understand.

The Happy Sceptic said...

SIGH! "Orbs" are a characteristic of modern auto focus cameras (which most are these days). The camera automtically focuses, usually on a large object in the center of the frame. Anything too small for the camera sensor to fix on appears out of focus, as a fuzzy, concentric circle. But all through history people have quickly jumped to supernatural conclusions when they witness something they don't understand. Sorry, it's not ghosts, spirits, souls or anything. Mostly likely a bug, snowflake, cottonwood tree seed, dust or the like. They will most often appear in night photos or indoor photos when the focus is specific (called focal range) On bright sunny days you get "infinity focus" and everything is in focus -- so you see bugs, or dust or floating seeds for what they are -- not orbs. But you'll believe what you want, I'm sure.

Illuminatus said...

@ The Happy Sceptic
"...through history people have quickly assumed the supernatural for anything they didn't immediately understand."
Through history people have also assumed the natural and explainable, just because it fits their frame of thought. I am reminded of the X-rays and how people assumed it a fraud just because Roedgen couldn't provide an explanation (hence the name).
As Arthur Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and I am afraid that it applies to every facet of science. If modern Quantum physicists where transported 100 years in the past they would be ridiculed as frauds and crazy people.
I am not advocating any side in the Orbs debate, a skeptic myself, but I do not hurry to jump to conclusions either.
Wondering about it keeps my brain alive.

Anonymous said...

OMG this is the first time i have seen these things in my whole life...i just took some photos in my sitting rooms...and i have noticed orbs in the background of my photos....i didnt know anything bout these things...until my niece and a good friend of mine told me about these so I googled it....omg...it's unbelievable..how can i post the photos please..

Anonymous said...

Oct 21, 2011 I was at a basket ball game photographing my daughter’s team. They we struggling in the game. I heard in the spirit call up on their angels and I did. I photographed the entire game with a Nikon D200 with an external flash about 200 images. I know my camera and I keep it the lens clean of dust. After I called upon their angels to come and help them -- 1 image showed a large light orb at the end of the court near the basket --that looks to me like a full moon. These girls went on to a big win. The images there after shot in that direction showed nothing.

Anonymous said...

In response to the person who said orbs are humidity-that is not true. I have taken pictures of orbs in my home. I have seen them enter and heard them, also when it was misty outside and I was watching tv I was splashed with water droplets this happened several times) and when I took a picture of the room-sure enough there was an orb, They also disappear when a flash from a camera goes off.

Anonymous said...

Yes I seen an Orb when my mother passed! I saw it float out of her chest stomach area