Nature's Known Laws Are Too Simple to Explain Vast Levels of Organization and Functional Complexity in Organisms

 Occasionally materialists will tell a lie as big as the sky, by claiming that all of the phenomena of life can be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry. You could hardly state a bigger falsehood. The truth is that the main discovered laws of nature are laws that are simple, and that laws so simple are utterly incapable of explaining either the vast levels of organization and fine-tuned functional complexity that we see in living organisms or the vast levels of diverse functionality and capabilities that we observe in the minds and behavior of such organisms. 

Let's take a look at the main laws of nature. The Google Gemini infographic below discusses some of the most important laws of nature: the law of gravitation, Coulomb's law of electromagnetism, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and the laws of thermodynamics. 

The law of universal gravitation (often called Newton's law) is a law that can be expressed by the very simple equation shown above, an equation so brief if could be written on the slip of paper inside a fortune cookie. The law is stated like this:

In the equation, F means the force of gravitational attraction between two bodies, m1 means the mass of the first body, m2 means the mass of the second body, and r² means the square of the distance between the bodies. The G stands for a fundamental constant of nature called the gravitational constant. 

This law of gravitation is a law following a very simple rule stated in Section 1 of the infographic above. The law of gravitation helps explain the formation of planet Earth. But this law does almost nothing to explain why our planet is  habitable. The law of gravitation also does nothing to explain any of the wonders of biology. The gravitational force within a living body (and between nearby living bodies) is negligible. 

The law of electromagnetism (Coulomb's law) is a law following a very simple rule stated in Section 2 of the infographic above. It's a law that (when stated in an equation) has a look very similar to the law of gravitation stated above. The law is twice as complex as the law of gravitation, because while gravitation involves only a force of attraction, electromagnetism can involve either attraction or repulsion. The rules here are simple:

(1) Each proton in the universe has the same positive charge equal to 1.602176634 times 10^-19 Coulomb.

(2) Each electron in the universe has exactly the same charge as each proton, the only difference being that the charge on every electron is negative, while the charge on every proton is positive. (The equality of the absolute value of these two types of charges is a dramatically stunning example of cosmic fine-tuning.)

(3) Between any positive charge and a negative charge, there is a force of attraction, inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. 

(4) Between any two charges of the same sign (such as two positive charges or two negative charges), there is a force of repulsion, inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. 

While significantly more complicated than the law of gravitation, Coulomb's law (the fundamental law of electromagnetism) is still very simple, simple enough for a guy like me to easily explain. Coulomb's law (the law of electromagnetism) has the most supreme relevance to the existence of life. A human can exist in a zero-gravity spaceship, without getting any benefit from gravitation. Conversely, no human being would last even an hour without Coulomb's law (the law of electromagnetism), which is necessary for all biochemistry. 

But while being absolutely necessary for biochemistry, Coulomb's law does almost nothing to explain the origin of life or the origin of visible organisms or the origin of the human species; nor does  Coulomb's law do much of anything to explain the nine-month progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast organization of the human body. Such marvels of fine-tuned complexity and hierarchical organization cannot be explained by simple mechanical principles such as attraction or repulsion. 

Another law mentioned in the infographic above is the Pauli Exclusion Principle. The Pauli Exclusion Principle is explained in my story "When I Trained to Be an Electron." I could explain the principle by expounding on the explanation in the infographic above, but I would much rather you read my story to hear an explanation of the principle. The Pauli Exclusion Principle is a very simple law of nature that is necessary for the existence of elements such as carbon and oxygen. But the principle does nothing to explain how such elements get organized into the fantastically complex and fine-tuned organizations of matter that are the bodies of humans.

There's another very important law of nature, one that scientists seem to have never given a name to. I can call it the Strong Nuclear Force law. This is the law that when nucleons (either protons or neutrons) get very, very close to each other, then they bind together as if they were bound by the strongest superglue. This very simple law is absolutely necessary for the existence of complex elements such as carbon and oxygen. But this law does nothing to explain how such elements get organized into the fantastically complex and fine-tuned organizations of matter thar are the bodies of humans.

The infographic above also mentions the very simple law that goes under the name of the Law of the Conservation of Energy or the Law of the Conservation of Mass-Energy. This is simply that mass-energy (which can exist as either mass or energy) cannot be created or destroyed. This law does nothing at all to help explain the wonders of life. 

The infographic above also mentions what is called the second law of thermodynamics, often described as the law that entropy (a measure of disorganization) always increases over time. This is a simple law, and it does nothing at all to explain how we ever got the wonders of life on Earth. To the contrary, many have argued that the progression of life on Earth seems to have acted in a way contrary to the second law of thermodynamics. 

An important law of nature not mentioned in the infographic is Boyle's Law, which holds that the pressure and volume of a confined gas are inversely proportional when temperature and mass are held constant. This does nothing to help explain the wonders of life on Earth. Another important law of chemistry is Avogadro's Law, which states that equal volumes of all gases, at the same temperature and pressure, contain an equal number of molecules. This very simple law does nothing to help explain the enormous complexity and organization of living things. 

Other important laws of physics include Newton's laws of motion. They are important in the preservation of life, but do not do much of anything to explain life's organization and complexity. Newton's laws of motion are also very simple (for example, one has the simple formula of f=ma, where m is a mass, a is an acceleration, and f is the force caused by the acceleration of such a mass). 

A very important law of nature that is not needed today is the law of the conservation of charge. This is the simple law that whenever charge is created, there must be an equal number of positive and negative charges created.  So if two high-speed and high-energy photons collide, they may create positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons -- but only in a way that the amount of positive charge created is equal to the amount of negative charge created. The law of the conservation of charge was supremely important in the early moments of the universe, when the universe was super-dense. Because of such a law, we ended up with a universe that  seems to be electrically neutral, one in which the number of protons is apparently equal to the number of electrons. But nowadays the law of the conservation of charge never comes into play, except in relation to what is going on in big expensive particle accelerators. In any case, the law is a very simple law. 

So above I have given a discussion of the main laws of nature. Have I left out any big law? What about a "law of evolution"? Is there any such thing?

No, there is not. To the great embarrassment of those wishing to explain evolution as an explanation for life's wonders, there does not exist in nature any such thing as a "law of evolution." Nor does there exist any such thing in nature as a "force of evolution." Things such as electromagnetism and gravitation are real forces that push and pull matter around. There is no "law of evolution" that pushes matter around or pulls matter in some direction. The organization of matter cannot be explained by such a law. There is no real force associated with evolution, and when Darwinists refer to a "force of evolution" they are using language loosely and metaphorically. 

What about a "law of development" or a "law of morphogenesis"? Is there any such thing that might explain the nine-month progression from a speck-sized zygote (existing just after impregnation) to the vastly more organized state of a full human body? There is not. We know of no laws of nature that can explain such a thing. 

So when materialists occasionally claim that all of the phenomena of life can be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry, they are telling a lie as big as the Pacific Ocean. The only laws of nature we know of are laws way too simple to explain the sky-high levels of functional complexity, purposeful dynamism and hierarchical organization we see in organisms such as humans. 

When it comes to explaining minds and memory, we find no laws of nature that are of any real help. Electrical transmission between neurons does not actually explain human cognition, despite common claims to the contrary. Is it perhaps a law of nature that the transmission of electricity gives rise to minds? No, it certainly is not. In thunderstorms there is electricity transmission with vastly more voltage than anything going on in the human mind; but all that electricity passing around does not give rise to the slightest bit of cognition. You could create some dramatic electrical gizmo like Tesla experimented with, and let it run all day. This would not produce the slightest amount of consciousness. 

 There is a state in which the human brain starts transmitting electricity much more dramatically than normal. This state is the tonic-clonic epileptic seizure (also called a grand mal seizure), which has been very roughly described as a lightning storm in the brain. This state does not produce higher levels of cognition, but produces unconsciousness.

Contrary to claims that electrical transmission between neurons is an explanation for human consciousness, we know that many people undergoing cardiac arrest have very vivid near-death experiences, when their brains have flatlined, becoming electrically inactive, as the brain does within 5 to 20 seconds after the heart stops. This is the opposite of what we would expect if minds are produced by electrical transmission in the brain. 

Below are some quotations in which scientists confess that they don't really understand morphogenesis, contrary to claims that known laws of physics or chemistry explain how a speck-sized zygote progresses to become a full human body.  

• "Yet while these are several examples of well-understood processes, our study of animal morphogenesis is really in its infancy." -- David Bilder and Saori L. Haigo1, "Expanding the Morphogenetic Repertoire: Perspectives from the Drosophila Egg." 
• "Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms." -- Timothy Saunders, developmental biologist (link).
• "An adult human body is made up of some 30 to 40 trillion cells, all of which stem from a single fertilized egg cell. The process by which the right cells appear to arrive in their right numbers at the right time at the right place -- development -- is only understood in the roughest of outlines." -- Five scientists (link). 
• "Our understanding of how our organs form is still in its infancy" -- A research project abstract written by scientists (link). 
• "Biochemistry cannot provide the spatial information needed to explain morphogenesis...Supracellular morphogenesis is mysterious...Nobody seems to understand the origin of biological and cellular order."  -- Six medical authorities (link). 
• "Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how these individual actions coordinate over a macroscopic number of cells to grow complex structures with exquisite functionality is unknown." - Five scientists (link). 
• "However, our understanding of the molecular and physical basis of morphogenesis in plants or in any other eukaryotic system [e.g. mammals] is still in its infancy due to the complexity and non-linearity of processes involved in morphogenesis dynamics (or Morphodynamics)." -- A description of a 2017-2021 scientific project, presumably written by scientists (link). 
• "Understanding morphogenesis in vertebrate tissues in development and disease poses one of the most significant challenges in the life sciences. Despite the impressive technical advances aimed at cellular and subcellular characterization and manipulation over the past half century, a clear picture of how form is created still remains in its infancy." -- Four scientists in 2025 (link). 
• "We don't know what dark matter is, we don't understand how the brain works or consciousness, we don't understand morphogenesis, we don't understand the origin of life." -- Physics PhD Michael Nielsen (link). 
• "You start off as a sperm and an egg, and nine months later [your body has been built], through a magical process of morphogenesis, which we don’t understand." -- Donald Hoffman, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine (link). 
• "We take it for granted that we go to bed with two sets of fully functional kidneys and that we wake up with them the next morning but we don't understand the fundamental processes that give rise to this very well choreographed maintenance of an organism's form and function." -- Scientist Sanchéz Alvarado (link). 
• "A quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, we still lack basic knowledge regarding the formation and function of the organ that gives its name to all mammals, and which provides important health benefits for children and their breastfeeding parent through the creation and delivery of breast milk." -- 3 scientists (link). 
• "Despite increasing knowledge of pathways controlling the differentiation of many cell types in the eye, we still lack a basic understanding of the mechanisms controlling its morphogenesis." - 3 scientists (link).  
• "The remarkable amount of data we now possess regarding genes, gene expression, and molecular epigenetics still has not enabled a clear conceptual understanding of the emergence of biological form during vertebrate morphogenesis." -- "Epigenetics Beyond the Cell: Supracellular Organization of Fate and Form in Morphogenesis " paper by four scientists in the year 2025 (link). 
• "The molecular mechanisms that control the three-dimensional forms of animal organs remain poorly understood." -- M.A. Krasnow (link).
• "In most instances, the molecular basis of morphogenesis in the eye is poorly understood." -- Donald F. Ready (link).
• "Many organs form globular structures, but how this is achieved is poorly understood." -- Two scientists in the year 2026 (link).
• "It is poorly understood how, in complex tissues, cells self-organize in a robust manner." -- Karl H. Palmquist, 2024 (link). 
• "Developmental morphogenesis reliably builds species-specific large-scale anatomies....The algorithms that guide growth and form are still poorly understood." -- Two scientists, 2023 (link).
• "How tissues develop distinct structures remains poorly understood." -- Two scientists, 2024 (link).

AlphaFold Software Did Not Solve the Protein Folding Problem, and Is Not Great at Predicting Protein Structure

Materialists are always spreading unfounded socially constructed triumphal legends. Materialists have spread the groundless triumphal legend that Charles Darwin explained the origin of species. The more scientists discover about the oceanic depths of hierarchical organization and functional complexity in living organisms and the endless numbers of interdependent fine-tuned components in living organisms, the less credible such a boast seems. Materialists have also  spread the groundless triumphal legend that neuroscientists have explained minds and memory. The credibility of such a boast will dissolve once you have made an adequately deep study of topics such as the physical shortfalls in all brains, medical case histories defying "brains make minds" dogma (discussed here), and the defective research practices of today's neuroscientists. 

The latest example of a groundless socially constructed triumphal legend spread by materialists is the claim that some software called the AlphaFold software (existing in forms such as AlphaFold, AlphaFold2 and AlphaFold3) solved the long-standing problem of biology called the protein folding problem. 

The human body contains 20,000+ protein molecules, and most protein molecules have a sequence of hundreds or thousands of amino acids specified by some particular gene.  But a protein molecule is not a mere chain of amino acids. Protein molecules have folded three-dimensional shapes necessary for their functions. 

Simplifying things, you can think of it this way:

Gene --> Polypeptide sequence (amino acid chain) --> Protein

How is it that a protein molecule gets the three-dimensional folded shape needed for its function? Does it read instructions on how to make such a shape from a gene? No, it does not. Nowhere in DNA or its genes is there any such thing as a specification for how to make the three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule. 

Ignoring possible cases of shape duplication, you can say that within the human body there are very roughly 20,000+ different protein molecule structures assumed by very roughly 20,000+ different types of protein molecules. The problem of how these folded shapes arise is the unsolved problem called the protein folding problem. 

We should avoid getting confused between the protein folding problem and the protein folding prediction problem, which are two separate problems. The protein folding prediction problem is the problem of predicting the three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule using that protein's amino acid sequence. The protein folding problem is the very different problem of why proteins assume the three-dimensional shapes that they have. Some progress has been made on the protein folding prediction problem by some AlphaFold software using machine-learning and massive databases storing information on genes and the shapes that proteins have. But that progress is merely progress on the protein folding prediction problem, not progress in solving the protein folding problem. The protein folding problem is still unsolved. Scientists do not understand how proteins are able to form into the three-dimensional shapes that they have, the shapes needed for their function. A scientific paper notes that "AlphaFold2 (AF2) revolutionized protein structure prediction, yet it is often conflated with the protein folding problem," thereby noting the confusion that is occurring between a protein structure prediction problem and a separate and distinct protein folding problem. 

Below are some quotes by scientists confessing that the protein folding problem has not been solved.

•  "In real time how the chaperones fold the newly synthesized polypeptide sequences into a particular three-dimensional shape within a fraction of second is still a mystery for biologists as well as mathematicians."   -- Arun Upadhyay, "Structure of proteins: Evolution with unsolved mysteries," 2019.
• "The problem of protein folding is one of the most important problems of molecular biology. A central problem (the so called Levinthal's paradox) is that the protein is first synthesized as a linear molecule that must reach its native conformation in a short time (on the order of seconds or less). The protein can only perform its functions in this (often single) conformation. The problem, however, is that the number of possible conformational states is exponentially large for a long protein molecule. Despite almost 30 years of attempts to resolve this paradox, a solution has not yet been found." -- Two scientists, "On a generalized Levinthal's paradox," 2018. 
• "How proteins fold remains a central unsolved problem in biology. While the idea of a folding code embedded in the amino acid sequence was introduced more than 6 decades ago, this code remains undefined. While we now have powerful predictive tools to predict the final native structure of proteins, we still lack a predictive framework for how [amino acid] sequences dictate folding pathways....Almost seven decades of experimental and theoretical inquiry have not revealed a 'folding code' at the amino acid level, i.e., rules endowed with the generality and predictive power required to connect amino acid sequence to how the protein attains its structure....Machine learning made it possible to identify weak correlations to generate the structure most likely to correspond to a sequence. This tour-de-force effort has largely solved the problem of predicting protein structure from sequence...but with a key limitation: the algorithm that predicts the structure is a complex black box of pattern recognition that casts little light on the process of folding and that tells us nothing about why only some sequences fold, or how physics and evolution are coupled." -- Five scientists in the year 2025 (link). 
• "The real challenge—that remains unanswered after more than 50 years of research in the structural biology field—is understanding the mechanisms that lead proteins to fold into their native state. The reason for these difficulties is that the central question of the protein folding problem remains unresolved: specifically, how a sequence of amino acids encodes its folding pathways." -- Scientist Jorge A. Vila, 2025 (link). 
• "One of the most puzzling and unsolved challenges in molecular biology is understanding how proteins fold. " -- Scientist Jorge A. Vila, 2026 (link). 
• "The origin of functional proteins remains a fundamental biological enigma...The physical principles governing protein genesis itself, from prebiotic condensation to functional protein emergence, remain unresolved."  -- Nine scientists, 2026 (link). 

A year 2026 paper makes it clear that contrary to boasts in the press, the AlphaFold2 software does not actually solve the protein folding problem, the problem of how protein molecules almost instantly acquire very complicated 3D shapes needed for their function. The year 2026 paper states, "The explanatory scientific understanding of the protein folding problem is thus not directly advanced by AF2 [AlphaFold2]." Later the same paper says, "The protein folding problem remains unsolved."

A paper published in the year 2026 throws some cold water on triumphal boasts about the AlphaFold software, while reiterating that the protein folding prediction problem (a "what" problem) is very different from the protein folding problem (the "how" problem of how proteins fold into the shapes needed for the biological function):

"AlphaFold only works some of the time.... However, true single sequence structure prediction has remained elusive. The cautious old guard who initially responded to AlphaFold by highlighting the difference between protein structure prediction (the what) and protein folding (the how), correctly saying that the second remains an open problem, has surprised nobody by not going on to work on protein folding."

How well does the AlphaFold series of software predict the structure of a protein, given its amino acid sequence?  According to one recent paper, the "official" answer to this question is to be found in the 2026 paper "CASP16 Protein Monomer Structure Prediction Assessment" which you can read here. Below I'll call this the CASP16 wrap-up paper. Over many years, there have been a series of CASP competitions, in which competitors using different types of software have tried to predict the 3D shape of a protein molecule, given an input of its amino acid sequence. The latest of these competitions which has published results was the CASP16 competition held in 2024, and its results are described in the paper above. (A CASP17 competition has just recently completed, but it will be quite a few months before we have a scientific paper publishing its results.) 

In a previous post I did discussing the CASP14 competition, I noted that there are two different ways of calculating the accuracy of a protein shape prediction: a GDT_TS measure and a more stringent GDT_HA measure. Using the more stringent GDT_HA measure, Figure 2B of the CASP16 wrap-up paper gives us the graph below showing prediction accuracy of the latest versions of the AlphaFold software (AlphaFold2 and AlphaFold3). AF2 refers to AlphaFold2. AF3 refers to AlphaFold3. 

Each little dot represents a particular prediction (or maybe a set of predictions). The vertical position of the dot represents how accurate the prediction was. Dots near the the top of the graph (near the 100 mark) are very good predictions. Dots in the blue areas of the graph are not very good predictions, predictions only about 70% correct. Dots below the blue areas of the graph are poor predictions. 

Anyone who has read the hype about the AlphaFold series of software may be surprised by the result above. The graph seems to show an average prediction accuracy of only about 70%, with the accuracy ranging from only about 40% to as high as almost 98%.  But didn't we read again and again science news articles making it sound like the AlphaFold series of software had mastered the problem of predicting the structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences? Such articles were very misleading. 

We read this: "Overall, [predictive] performance on monomer targets in CASP16 showed minimal improvement compared to CASP15." The reference is to the CASP16 competition held in 2024 and the CASP15 competition held in 2022.  The statement I just quoted contradicts the impression that we have got from the press of skyrocketing progress in this area. 

A key issue in evaluating the predictive effectiveness of the AlphaFold series of software is the issue of target size.  The target size refers to the amino acid length of a protein which AlphaFold software attempted to describe using its structure prediction methods. The wrap-up paper mentioned above does a bad job of describing these target sizes. To find the target sizes, you must go to the page here  (the page for the CASP16 competition) and then click on the "Target List" link, which takes you to the page here. 

The page isn't well-designed in terms of presenting information in a way that the average reader will understand. Under the heading of "Multimers" we have a cryptic column heading of "Res" which gives numbers. Those numbers are the "residue length" of the proteins that were used as prediction targets, and these "residue lengths" were the number of amino acids in the proteins. If you click on the "Res" column, the column will sort by the lengths of the amino acid sequences in the proteins. When you see a number above about 450, you are looking at more difficult prediction targets.  When you see a number above 1000, you are looking at the most difficult prediction targets.  When you see a number below 400, you are looking at the easiest prediction targets.  

Scrolling down the page, I see that the selected prediction targets were mostly not very challenging. Very many types of human proteins have more than 1000 amino acids, and more than 500 types of human proteins have more than 3000 amino acids each.  But out of 150 prediction targets of the CASPR16 competition, only 29 had amino acid lengths greater than 1000. About 35 of the 150 or so prediction targets had an amino acid length between 1000 and 600. 38 of the prediction targets had an amino acid length between 600 and 450. About 49 of the 150 or so prediction targets had an amino acid length less than 450, which is less than the average amino acid length of a human protein.  

So given this not-very-challenging set of prediction targets that has less-complex-than-average types of proteins about as frequently as more-complex-than-average types of proteins, we should not be too impressed by Figure 2B showing a prediction accuracy of about 70%. It would seem that if the prediction targets had been proteins with above-average complexity as often as targets with average complexity, that the reported prediction accuracy of about 70% would have been something much smaller, such as maybe 60% or 50%. 

From the graph above, it is clear that the AlphaFold family of software does not very well predict the structure of protein molecules, using the amino acid sequence as an input.  Its performance accuracy should not be described as "very good" but merely as perhaps "fair-to-somewhat-good."

There is a site called the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database which you can reach here. The average person will be puzzled by how you can use this site to check the quality of predictions by the AlphaFold software.  I can describe one way.  You can get a list a protein names by going to the UnitProt database site here, and typing in a query like this:

(length:[1000 TO 50000]) AND (organism_name:"Homo sapiens")

This will give you a result of thousands of rows, showing human proteins that have more than 1000 amino acids. You can then type in some of the data from that result set into the search box of the page for the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database which you can reach here.

Doing that, I got some results from that page, and the results were not very impressive. For example, I typed in the phrase "Transcription factor TFIIIB component B'' homolog" using a phrase I had got from the UniProt result set using the query above. I got these results from a few queries using the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database:

Protein Name	Gene	UniProt ID	Amino Acid Length	Global Quality (How Well Alpha Fold Predicts the Struc- ture)
Transcription factor TFIII    B component B'' homolog	BDP1	A6H8Y1-4	1372	46.75 (Very Low)
AT-rich interactive domain-containing protein 1A	ARID1A	O14497-2	2068	48.75 (Very low)
Centrosomal protein of 290 kDa	CEP290	O15078	2479	60.53 (low)
Zinc finger protein 292	ZNF292	O14497-2	2578	46.91 (Very Low)
Photoreceptor cilium actin regulator	PCARE	A6NGG8	1288	43.78 (Very Low)
Transcription initiation factor TFIID subunit 4	TAF4	O00268	1085	52.78 (Low)

I did not have to do much work to find these examples of low-quality predictions by the AlphaFold software.  I had to only search through a random list of about 15 or 20 proteins with an amino acid length greater than 1000.  When I searched for proteins with an amino acid length between 500 and 700 (only somewhat more complex than an average human protein molecule), I quickly found some examples that the AlphaFold software performed poorly on when analyzing. For example, its prediction about the TANK-binding kinase 1-binding protein 1 of 611 amino acids was not very good, being rated as only "63.62 (Low)." And the AlphaFold software's prediction about a Nucleolar protein 4 of 536 amino acids was not very good, rated as only "60.91 (Low)."

I may note that the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database site which you can reach here uses quality-rating adjectives that are way too positive-sounding. The database routinely describes predictions that are only about 70% accurate as being "high" in quality. In few other fields would ratings be so charitable. For example, if a car assembly team assembled only 70% of the car's parts correctly, it would make no sense to claim its assembly skill was "high." And if someone predicting the outcome of mixing particular quantities of particular chemicals had an accuracy rating of only 70%,  people would not rate his accuracy as "high," but complain that he was poor at predictions.  You would hardly claim that your physician was "high" in proficiency if he prescribed the right medicine only 70% of the time. In field such as physics, any theory of gravitation would be subject to the most scornful derision if it made predictions that were only 90% accurate, and its proponents claimed that this was "high" accuracy.  In fields such as physics, a rating of "high" quality tends to go to only predictions that are at least 99% accurate. 

An example of the grotesque misinformation being stated in the popular press about the AlphaFold software is this claim in an article:

"DeepMind started developing AlphaFold in 2018. In 2020, it was recognized as a solution to humanity's 50-year-old 'protein folding problem,' which sought to answer how amino acids automatically fold into complex 3D shapes. "

The AlphaFold software did nothing to solve the "50-year-old 'protein folding problem,' which sought to answer how amino acids automatically fold into complex 3D shapes." All that the AlphaFold software did was to make some progress on a different problem, the protein folding prediction problem. And the progress that the AlphaFold software made was very limited. The graph above with the blue areas shows that it is still impossible to accurately predict the structure of most proteins from their amino acid sequences. 

It wasn't just the writer quoted above who misinformed us on this topic. It was the organization that runs the CASP competition, which issued a highly misleading press release in 2020. One of endless science press releases with unfounded boasts, the press release quoted a Professor Dame Janet Thornton as saying the following: 

" One of biology s biggest mysteries is how proteins fold to create exquisitely unique three-dimensional structures. Every living thing   from the smallest bacteria to plants, animals and humans   is defined and powered by the proteins that help it function at the molecular level.  So far, this mystery remained unsolved, and determining a single protein structure often required years of experimental effort. It s tremendous to see the triumph of human curiosity, endeavour and intelligence in solving this problem. A better understanding of protein structures and the ability to predict them using a computer means a better understanding of life, evolution and, of course, human health and disease." 

Here Thornton bungled badly by confusing two different problems: the protein folding prediction problem (the problem of predicting the structure of proteins from their amino acid sequence) and the protein folding problem (the problem of how proteins are able to form their three-dimensional structures from amino acid sequences that do not specify such structures). It was a goof as bad as someone getting all mixed up and conflating and confusing the problem of how to play the card game called bridge, and the problem of how to construct a bridge. At the time this quote was made, and even so today, nothing had occurred to justify this boast about "solving this problem," as nothing had been done to solve the protein folding problem; and no software existed that very accurately and reliably predicted protein structure. And no such software exists even today. 

Referring to the AlphaFold3 software using the phrase AF3, a year 2026 paper states this: "We conclude that AF3 is a poor predictor of D-peptide chirality, fold, and binding pose."

We are reminded here that materialism is a giant myth-making machine.  Materialism grinds out example after example of unfounded socially constructed triumphal legends, particularly when such legends serve the ideological needs of materialists. The protein folding problem is a great thorn in the side of materialists. Somehow proteins in our bodies are constantly forming into the three-dimensional shapes needed for their biological function, just as if some purposeful intelligence of vast power was acting to achieve such effects.  This reality is troubling to materialists, and we can understand why they would wish to construct an analgesic legend to ease their discomfort over this matter.  But the claim that AlphaFold family of software programs solved the protein folding problem is as unfounded as the claim that Darwin explained the origin of species. 

At about this time (September, 2026) the latest in the CASP series of competitions has completed, a competition called CASP17. It will be quite a few months before there is published a paper that details the predictive accuracy of competitors in this competition. In December 2026 there will be a conference announcing preliminary results of the CASP17 competition. Given the misleading content in the November, 2020 CASP press release, we should be suspicious of boasts of any press release announcing results of the CASP17 competition, and subject such a press release to critical scrutiny. 

A major contributor to the social construction of unfounded triumphal legends is the Nobel Prize organization, which sometimes gives undeserved Nobel prizes, or publishes unfounded or misleading claims when awarding Nobel prizes, as I document in my post here. When it awarded a Nobel prize in chemistry to two people who had worked on protein structure prediction, the claim was modest. Officially the award is merely going "for protein structure prediction."  But the announcement page links to biographies of the two scientists awarded, and in both cases the pages have remarkably misleading statements. On the pages here and here, we have this very misleading statement:

"In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper presented an AI model called AlphaFold2. With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all known proteins."

No such accurate prediction occurred, as my text above documents; and AlphaFold2's accuracy as measured in the graph above is only about 70%. Someone trying to defend this statement quoted above would sound pretty duplicitous. He might say, "We just said predict, we didn't say predict accurately." 

AI May Soon Replace Pushover Science Journalists, But Not Analysts of Scientist Truth Claims

 So-called artificial intelligence (AI) is making progress, and quite a few workers are worried that their jobs may be replaced by AI. One type of worker who might reasonably have such worries is the typical person calling himself a science journalist. In recent years the work of those calling themselves science journalists has been largely a kind of formulaic work that AI programs might be able to reproduce. Typical science journalists act like cheerleaders to promote the latest scientific papers.  

To understand the current role of the science journalist, you need to understand the economic motivations behind misleading exaggerations about scientific papers and the uncritical regurgitation and amplification of scientist boasts. In my post "Why the Academia Cyberspace Profit Complex Keeps Giving Misleading Brain Research Reports" I discussed the economic reasons why we keep getting misleading research about brains, and misleading headlines about brain research. The analysis in that post holds true not just for brain research, but for scientific research in general. We live in an economy in which misleading stories about scientific research and groundless but interesting-sounding scientific speculation are highly incentivized, so that there are strong motives for such things. To give a short synopsis of what I discussed at much greater length in that post, the economic motivations are something like this:

(1) Scientists are judged by how many papers they publish and how many citations such papers get.

(2) Because of publication bias (in which papers reporting positive results and particularly interesting-sounding positive results are more likely to be published), scientists are strongly motivated to publish papers claiming positive results and also claiming interesting-sounding results.

(3) Wishing to make themselves appear like sources of important research breakthroughs to help justify their exorbitant tuition, universities are motivated to produce press releases exaggerating the importance of research papers published by their professors.

(4) Since science news is published on web pages with ads that generate revenue for the people running or funding the web pages, with revenue proportional to how interesting-sounding a story is, those running science news web sites or science analysis web sites have an enormous economic motivation to create clickbait headlines that generate higher numbers of page views, and more advertising revenue. Science news sites these days are almost always built in the form of headlines that you must click to read the story; and each time this causes a web page with ads to appear, the people running or funding the site get money from views of the ads displayed on the page you opened up.

The result of all of this is a very wacky world we might call the world of scitainment, to use a word that combines the words "science" and "entertainment." Scitainment is a part of the internet that blends science and entertainment. Very much of what we read in this strange world of scitainment is true, and very much of it is false. The world of scitainment blends fact and fantasy, always trying its best to produce entertaining stories and clickbait headlines. It's all about luring you in to click on the headlines that lead to articles, so that you go to pages that generate ad revenue for the people running the web sites. 

Scitainment is very big business these days.  A vital part of scitainment is what we can call the pushover science journalist.  The pushover science journalist is typically someone ever-ready to promote and hype and sing the praises of low-quality science research.  

The economic ecosystem that incentivizes unfounded boasts about weak-quality scientific research shows no signs of going away any time soon. 

Part of the reason such an ecosystem persists is that researchers have a "wink and a nod" toleration for the lies and exaggerations of university press releases, knowing that such hype increases the likelihood that researchers will get an increase in their cherished goal of higher citation counts. 

But while the work role of "pom-pom" pushover science journalists shows no sign of disappearing, there is a reason to think that trying to build a long-term career working in such a role may be a hazardous bet. The reason is that it may be likely that the role of pushover science journalist can be replaced by AI programs (so-called artificial intelligence). 

Nowadays one of the main features of so-called artificial intelligence programs (AI) are what are called large-language models (LLM).  Such programs are trained on very large bodies of text such as billions of pages that can be accessed by programs roaming the internet. Such programs are able to detect certain types of patterns, and mimic such patterns. 

So, for example, suppose you give a large-language model 10,000 cases of science-related press releases appearing online. Such press releases will typically have a link to a scientific paper being promoted. A large language model can train using some algorithm in which the scientific papers are regarded as inputs and the press releases are regarded as outputs.  From such training, a LLM may be able to pick up outputs that tend to be produced when scientific papers are being promoted. This does not involve any real understanding of the content. The large language model simply learns that certain types of scientific papers become associated with certain types of promotional documents that use language in a particular way. 

We can imagine a day not very far in the future in which the role of pushover science journalists is largely taken over by AI programs such as large-language models.  A few years from now, it might be that a university wishing to promote its latest science study may simply provide the study to some AI program that produces a promotional press release. We can also imagine that in a few years AI programs may largely take over the job of writing clickbait science news stories that are based on a particular press release and a particular scientific study. 

Part of the reason why the work of pushover science journalists may be achievable by AI programs is that such work is so formulaic and tends to repeat the same old catchphrases, the same old boasts, and the same old recitations of the speech customs of materialists. The more formulaic some type of writing is, the easier it is for an AI program to duplicate it.  An example of a formulaic statement constantly appearing in puff piece press releases are statements that sound like:  "This new research sheds light on the long-standing mystery of ____________________."

But there's a type of writer very different from the pushover science journalist.  Using an acronym, you might call this type of writer an ASCOT. The acronym ASCOT stands for Analyst of Scientist Claims of Truth. 

An ASCOT has no goal of providing boastful accounts of some scientific paper. An ASCOT has no goal of writing online stories that provide clickbait headlines.  An ASCOT has the goal of analyzing the truth claims made by scientists, and to judge whether such claims are well-founded or poorly supported, and whether such claims are contradicted by other things that humans have observed.  Part of the job of being a good ASCOT is the job of being a reality detective, one willing to ponder and classify all of the clues that reality gives us, without throwing away clues after giving lame justifications such as "professors don't believe in that." 

There is no way to automate most of the work of an ASCOT, because such work requires analyzing the claims of scientists from a perspective that considers all observations that humans have made and all facts that humans have learned, with a large degree of understanding and insight (something so-called AI systems do not actually have).  Any good ASCOT needs to be a diligent scholar of many different topics and many different subjects.  A good ASCOT needs to have a deep understanding of many broad topics, an understanding that is beyond the reach of AI systems, which do not really understand anything. 

Let us consider a hypothetical example in which some scientific study claims to have determined that Little Neural Effect X offers a solution to what the authors call "the problem of consciousness." Analyzing whether such a claim is a groundless boast first requires some understanding of whether the matter of explaining human minds is equivalent to solving a "problem of consciousness." But an AI system could not have such an understanding.  To decently understand such a thing, you would need to understand how human mentality and human mental experiences and human mental capabilities are something a thousand times bigger or a million times bigger than mere "consciousness." The diagram below illustrates a bit of the understanding you might need. 

If a person has studied all of the items listed above, and the person has some understanding of such topics, he may have done quite a bit of the work needed to be a good ASCOT. But no AI system is likely any time soon to have such understanding.  

A study of all the topics mentioned would produce only some of the knowledge and understanding needed to skillfully analyze scientist truth claims. Very much more study would be needed, including a study of the topics that are discussed on this blog and my blog here. 

AI systems using large language models (LLM) work by web crawling and frequency-of-assertion ranking. This works well when the AI system is called on to answer factual questions such as how did Abraham Lincoln die.  Web crawling and frequency-of-assertion ranking can also produce good results when it comes to opinions that are widely held and true. But web crawling and frequency-of-assertion ranking can fail very badly when it comes to assertions that are frequently made but are untrue or not well justified. Very many of the claims in today's science literature are such untrue claims, claims that are massively made but not justified by observations, and often contradicted by other observations that have received insufficient attention. When unjustified claims are being massively made, AI systems and large language models can aid, abet and amplify the "echo chamber" effect by which some erroneous idea "went viral." 

How can you sort out which commonly made claims in science literature are well-justified, and which are mainly just speech customs and social constructs of a conformist belief community with headquarters in academia? That requires understanding, insight and the most careful and thoughtful study of many very deep subject matters.  That is the type of work that cannot be done by AI large-language models that work based on web crawling to tally up which assertions are most commonly made. To properly sort out which commonly made claims in science literature are well-justified and which are not, it requires insight and philosophical judgment beyond the reach of AI systems. 

An ASCOT will often be someone taking the long, hard, winding path that leads to a destination of philosophical insight after the most laborious study and pondering of many deep topics and many strange and surprising observational reports. There's no way to get to such a destination by unleashing some horde of web-crawling software programs that engage in programmatic screen-scraping and frequency-of-assertion ranking. 

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 11)

 Below are some posts I have published about people reporting they saw mysterious orbs with the naked eye:

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 1 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 2 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 3 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 4 of 4)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 5)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 6)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 7)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 8)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 9)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 10)

Let us look at some more cases of this type.

Below is an account from page 10 of the November 1962 Psychic Observer which you can read here.

"Another frightening UFO encounter—a thirty mile chase—was reported by Mr. and Mrs. Richard DuBois, 13481 Shirley Street, Westminister, California. On the night of October 21, returning from a vacation, they were driving along Route 60 in New Mexico. Except for their car, the highway was deserted. It was about 2 a.m., when a 'brilliant ball of white light' flashed down across the car, slowed, then turned back and followed alongside. 'At first, I thought it was an airplane making an emergency landing,' said Mrs. DuBois. But the strange 'ball ’ streaked back into the sky. DuBois’ conjecture that it might be an odd moonlight reflection was quickly disproved. For the bright object again flashed down, raced ahead of the car, then flowed to let them catch up.  'We were really frightened by this time.' Mrs. DuBois reported. And their alarm increased when the strange device pacing them suddenly separated into four smaller, glowing objects. Flying alongside, the formation kept pace with the car until a service station appeared ahead. When DuBois slowed down, the four UFO's flashed upward and went out of sight. 'We were so terrified.' said Mrs. DuBois, 'That my husband drove at 100 miles an hour to the next town. We asked if there had been any reports of flying objects, but people only laughed. They thought was it was funny, but we were plenty scared.' "

The account includes this artist's drawing:

On page 121 of the document here, we read an account by J. Ricardo Lavicka, telling what he saw at about  age 14. He says that he saw forming above the head of a dying sister a translucent sphere about as big as a basketball. We read this: 

In a book on page 43 the author Jas Robertson reports his first attendance at what apparently was a seance of David Duguid (the wording is a little unclear about which medium was involved):

"At my first sitting I witnessed phenomena which I have never forgotten, and I can recollect saying to myself, when I saw a globe of light travelling from the end of the room, and assuming the form of a human hand when it reached the table, 'There never can come to me in all the future years anything which will weaken or make me deny what I am now witnessing.' "

Telekinesis refers to some paranormal ability to move matter only by mind or the power of spirit. You could use the term for any inexplicable movement seen at a seance, such as the table levitations that were so widely reported. On page 294 of the document here, we have a letter by Arthur Conan Doyle, dated July 19, 1922. He records observations at a seance of the Austrian medium Frau Silbert:

"Yesterday, July 18th, I was one of six who sat with Frau Silbert, the Austrian medium, at the British College of Psychic Science....I was seated on the left of the medium. Behind her was the 'cabinet,' a curtained enclosure, partially open in front. This I examined and found empty. The red light was kept fairly high—so high that we could easily see every movement of the medium or of each other. We laid our watches upon the ground under the table, as it was said that the medium’s control was able sometimes to scratch his name, Ivel, upon them. I may say at once that this phenomenon did not take place....

Presently the medium sank into trance, and made curious movements with her hands as if she were drawing some substance from her mouth and nose. If anyone were choking with cobwebs and was trying to clear oneself, it is the movement they would have made. She then stood up, gave a sharp cry, and picked apparently out of the air behind her one of the watches which had been on the ground. We were all agreed that neither she nor any member of the company had stooped down from the moment that the watches had been placed there. It was a clear case of movement without contact or telekinesis.  

The trance now deepened and the woman gave little whining cries, exactly like those which are the prelude to childbirth. Eva gives the same cries when she is about to emit ectoplasm. The actual emission is, I fancy, a relief. Presently I saw on the floor, about a foot behind the medium, and between her chair and mine, a luminous ball, like a phosphorescent sponge, rather larger than my fist. It was quite clear but it vanished in a few seconds. Further luminous patches then appeared protruding from under the curtains. The ball was exactly such as has been described by Miss Scatcherd in her observations upon Eva.....Several times the curtain of the cabinet was blown out as in a high wind, and twice I was touched by some solid body when I was quite clear of the medium. The sensation was that of a dog rubbing against my leg."

The mysterious fluttering of a curtain (as if blown by a wind) was an effect frequently reported in the seances of Eusapia Palladino.  From a quality-of-evidence standpoint, a dated account like this (stating what someone saw on the same day or the previous day) is relatively good evidence, much better than someone just recalling what he saw months ago or years ago. I advise people to always immediately write down a dated signed account of any thing very unusual that they witnessed, whether it be something paranormal-seeming or something that may be a matter of investigation by a scientist or a court. 

Below is an account from a paper dated September 10, 1959:

Brothers, Neighbor Report UFO Here Bright As Moon (From The Peoria Journal Star) 

"A Peoria drug salesman reported seeing an unidentified flying object 'just about as bright as the moon but not as high' at 10:30 p m. Saturday as be went out to move his car. J. H. Baker, 2725 Renwood Ave., Hamilton Park, said he at first thought the object was an airplane, but it then appeared as 'a round large ball of white light.' The phenomenon, said Baker, could be seen moving rapidly from southwest to northeast at a height of 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Baker said the object also was seen by his brother, R. J. Baker, visiting here from Chicago, and by a neighbor, Jack Rhodes, 2724 Renwood. The brother trained a powerful pair of binoculars on it. The strange object stayed in sight from 4 to 6 minutes. 'It was moving much faster than a jet plane,' Baker reported." 

The length of time the sight was observed seems to rule out a meteor (something that appears visible in the sky for less than 15 seconds).  A check of a moon phase calendar suggests that on the Saturday in question (September 6, 1959) the moon looked like a mere thin crescent. 

A very distinguished Earl (called under British customs the Master of Lindsay or Lord Lindsay) had many meetings with the famous medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Lord Lindsay kept careful records of paranormal events occurring at such meetings. Lord Lindsay was interviewed by the investigators of the famous Dialectical Society of London, when they did their long formal investigation finding resoundingly in favor of paranormal phenomena, which resulted in a long report that can be read in full using the link here or here. Lord Lindsay described viewing various dramatic types of paranormal phenomena, and his testimony is summarized in my post here. 

Lord Lindsay had printed up a small number of copies of a privately printed document discussing his observations of the paranormal around 1870. For many years the document was available only to a small, select group of people who had one of the rare copies. Finally in the 1920's the Society for Psychical Research published the document, which appeared in Volume 35 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1925), which you can read here.  We have a book-length document describing some of the most amazing marvels humans have ever seen. 

On page 60 and the following pages we have a description of a Seance #6 at the house of Mr. Jencken, the husband of the medium Kate Fox, by then Kate Fox Jencken. (Kate was herself someone associated with many reports of the paranormal, as discussed here.) First we read that a servant at the house had been "seeing phosphorescent balls of light in her room at night."

We then read this:

"Home stood up and said, 'He is very strong and tall.'  and standing there beside me. Home grew, I should say, at least, six inches. Mr. Jencken, who is a taller man than Home, stood beside him, so there could be no mistake about it. Home's natural height is, I believe, 5 feet 10 inches. I should say he grew to 6 feet 4 inches or 6 feet 6 inches. I placed my hands on his feet, and felt that they were fairly level on the ground. .... He appeared to grow also in breadth and size all over, but there was no way of testing that. He diminished down to his natural size, and said, 'Daniel will grow tall again ' ; he did so, and said, 'Daniel's feet are on the ground,' he walked about, and stamped his feet. He returned to his natural size, and sitting down, he said, 'Daniel is coming back now, sit down, and do not tell Daniel at once what he has said.' In a few seconds he awoke."

This was only one of many times in which a paranormal elongation of the body of Daniel Dunglas Home was reported. We then read that the seance ended in this way

"We all went into the drawing room ; it was quite dark. Home sat at the piano, and played a few notes. Mrs. Hennings sat near him ; Mrs. Jencken a little way off ; Mr. Jencken and I stood near the piano. Soon we observed the light that we had been told we should see. A small luminous ball flitting about, sometimes very brilliant ; the chords of the piano were swept, but the keys were not touched. The piano was lifted off the ground about 2 inches. I had my hand underneath, and it was again lifted about 2 inches, and then without any effort, I should say 8 inches higher. It was not tilted, but lifted bodily. We now heard loud raps, the alphabet was called, and ' Good night ' spelled out. Nothing more occurred.."

Effects such as these in the presence of Daniel Dunglas Home were reported by many witnesses. As discussed in my post here, Home was investigated by the leading physicist Sir William Crookes, who reported dramatic paranormal effects occurring in Home's presence, including the levitation of Home himself (as you can read about in Crookes' publications here and here). 

On page 187 of the March 21, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here, we get two astonishing accounts. First, we hear of the sighting of an apparition:

"In the Revue Spirite Beige for February (Liège), Dr. Lucien Graux tells the following story. One night, M. Albert Lambert, of the Comédie Française, was silently going over his part in ' Ruy Bias'  in his private room, when there entered a man in a long cloak, who was the very image of the Ruy Bias of the title part of the play. The apparition commenced to recite Victor Hugo’s verses. Albert Lambert listened with every sense alert; it was as though revelation and enlightenment were coming to him from the other world. When he was afterwards questioned about this vision, the famous actor replied: ' You wish to know whether it was an illusion, whether I really saw, or only thought I saw? My emphatic reply is this : I both saw and I heard.' ”

Then we have an account of a mysterious blue orb appearing at a seance:

"An eye-witness has sent to the Neues Wiener Journal (Vienna, January 7th), an interesting account of a sitting with the young French Medium, Mile. Remy. The sitters were the guests of Professor Lyonel, and included two well-known University Professors, two medical men, and an engineer, who was in charge of an intricate set of control apparatus, including a camera for infra-red film photography, as well as one that registered even the faintest manifestation of light. The delicate-looking young girl sat down in an armchair and was then put into slight hypnotic sleep. After an interval of only five minutes, Professor Lyonel was touched by a hand and the correspondent by another; then the table on which the sitters’ hands were resting was raised by powerful pressure from below and levitated into the air. The wish was expressed that the hitherto sceptical investigators might be enabled to see what was taking place, and a second later an iridescent ball of blue light appeared close under the ceiling; and the ticking of the light-registering apparatus gave independent evidence of this fact. By the light of this ball of blue, the sitters saw that the table was raised six to seven feet above the floor. The light then sank down over the Medium’s chair, revealing the sleeping figure of the young girl; and so profound was this sleep that it was not broken when, next moment, with a loud report, the ball of light burst and disappeared.

The account ends: 'There followed ten minutes of expectant waiting, when suddenly the room was filled with the most marvellous but infinitely sad music of a violin. We had seen before the room was darkened that, amongst the instruments on its walls, there was a violin, with its bow beside it. But whose was the masterhand that was now playing it? Certainly not the Medium’s, for, under the controlling eyes of the apparatus, she could not leave her seat even for one second without being detected; and the strip of film which I was allowed to examine later on proved that throughout the seance Mile. Remy had never left her chair. But the photograph also showed a film-like hand hovering in the air, with the delicate tapering fingers of a woman—ethereally delicate, as if from another world than ours.' ”

On page 375 of the June 22, 1934 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here, we read the following account of observing mysterious orbs in a seance:

"MME. NIJINSKY, who recently returned to London, tells us of a strange experience of Rudi Schneider and his wife. Rudi said he had never sat with a Medium. Mme. Nijinsky took him and his wife to Miss Frances Campbell. During the sitting—which Rudi, we are told, hugely enjoyed—balls of light sprang up and skipped from Rudi to Mme. Nijinsky’s lap. Miss Campbell gave accurate descriptions of the family affairs of her sitters ; then she turned to Mrs. Schneider and said : 'I feel I must prepare you for a blow. Your brother has been shot to-day in Linz.'  Mrs. Schneider protested that it could not be true. Next day, however, a telegram arrived stating that in the riot which cost so many lives in Austria, Mrs. Schneider’s brother had been killed."

On page 13 of the January 1897 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which you can read here, we read this:

"On the evening of May 21st, 1881, I was seated by a window at A. B. Rolfs in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Saw two large balls of light pass the window followed by a long crimson scarf that [it] seemed would never pass, its length was so great. I rose from my seat and went to the dining-room where some of the family were at tea ; told them what I saw, and stated my convictions that it was some national calamity. The balls meant death and the long scarf blood that would enwrap the whole nation. I then saw a stout, dark young man who handed me a paper. I then said, 'We will hear of this by such a young man as I describe.'  Time passed and the vision had gone from memory, when one day in July, same year, we all sat sewing and a man passed the window. I recognised the young man I had seen in my May vision ; sprang to meet him and he handed me a bulletin announcing Garfield's assassination, or rather the shooting that cost his life—the first intimation we had had of such a thing."

President Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, and never fully recovered. He died on September 19,1881. The shooting was about six weeks after the strange sight of moving balls of light. 

Below is a passage from page 110 of the book The Other World  by Frederick George Lee, which you can read here: 

"The husband was often absent, but he and his wife occupied the room in which Mrs. Webb had died, while· their daughter, a girl about ten years of age, slept in a small bed in the comer. ...

Mrs. Accleton, during her husband's absence, having engaged her mother to sleep with her one night, was suddenly aroused at the same hour of two by a strange and unusual light in her room. Looking up she saw quite plainly the spirit of Mrs. Webb, which moved towards her with a gentle appealing manner, as though it would have said, ' Speak, speak ! ' 

" This spectre appeared likewise to a Mrs. Radboune, a Mrs. Griffiths, and a Mrs. Holding. They assert that luminous balls of light hovered about the room during the presence of the spirit, and that streams of light seemed to go up towards a trapdoor in the ceiling, which led to the roof of the cottage."

Page 231 of the May 19, 1883 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here,  has an article by Stella Dunbar about experiences at a supposedly haunted house. We read this:

"Just at this time a young lady was crossing a passage, and looking from the window to the garden saw a woman in a light dress crossing the lawn. She called her companion, and they both watched the figure disappear. The same evening two others, knowing nothing of what these had seen, met the same figure coming from my room, and even noticed that it had very large bare feet."

We later read this:

"A visitor saw a woman’s figure, in everyday attire, sitting at the foot of her bed ; and my mother, entering the same room, saw what—until she spoke to it—she imagined to be the servant. In this room are frequently seen large balls of bright light."

The account has some other mentions of spooky figures making fleeting appearances at the house. We are told, "The figure of a child has been seen by the drawing-room fire-place, and at the top of the stairs."

Not long ago there was a news article on the CBS News web site entitled "Pentagon solves 1 UFO mystery but still probing cases of 'large orange orb,' 'large metallic cylinder.' "

In the article we read this strange description of an orb encounter:

"One case was reported by a law enforcement officer 'out West' who observed 'a large orange orb floating several hundred feet above the ground,' according to Kosloski. 

As the officer approached where he thought the orb would be, he saw 'a blacker than black object' that was about the size of a Prius. When he reached a distance of 40-60 meters away from the object, it tilted 45 degrees and shot up vertically, traveling faster than any drone he had seen before.

Just as it left his field of view, it emitted bright red and blue lights that lit up the inside of his vehicle 'as brightly as if someone had set off fireworks just outside of his vehicle,' Kosloski told Congress."