At the link here you can read a full transcript of last month's US Congress hearing on UFOs, which occurred on July 26, 2023. The transcript often uses the term UAP. Some government committee or group is currently using the term UAP, previously defined as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and then later more broadly defined as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
A remarkable feature of the hearing is the repeated references to mysterious orbs, which occurred both using the term "orb" and using the term "sphere." Below are quotations that show some of the references.
Mysterious Orb Reference #1:
Ryan Graves: "During a training mission in morning area whiskey seventy two, ten miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, two F18 super hornets were split by UAP. The object described as a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere came within fifty feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be five to fifteen feet in diameter. The mission commander terminated the flight immediately and returned base."
The report by military pilot Ryan Graves refers to something occurring in 2014. We hear of two US fighter jets that have a close encounter with "a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere." We would not expect a drone or aerial vehicle to have such a shape.
Mysterious Orb Reference #2:
Later Graves tells a story that seems to repeat the same story above:
Ryan Graves: One of these objects was, completely stationary at the exact entrance, to our working areas, not only geographically, but also at altitude. So it was right where all the jets are going essentially on the eastern seaboard. The two aircraft flew within about fifty feet of the object, and that was a a very close visual sighting.
Jamie Raskin: And you were in one of the aircraft?
Ryan Graves: I was not. I was there when the pilot landed. He canceled the mission after. I was there. He was in the ready room with all his gear on with his, mouth open. And I asked him what the problem was. And he said he almost hit one of those darn things.
Jamie Raskin: He said he was fifty feet away from it.
Ryan Graves: Yes, sir.
Jamie Raskin: And his description of the object was consistent with the description you gave us before.
Ryan Graves: A dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere.
Jamie Raskin: Inside of a clear sphere. Yes. And with no self evident propulsion system.
Ryan Graves: No wings, no higher energy coming off of the vehicle. Nothing tethering it to the ground. And that was that was primarily what we were experiencing out there.
So apparently the military was encountering mysterious orbs consisting of a clear sphere with a cube inside it, floating very high in the air.
Mysterious Orb Reference #3:
Later Graves seemed to again mention the same incident, this time supplying an estimate as to the size of the mysterious orb. He states, "The object described as a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere came within fifty feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be five to fifteen feet in diameter."
Mysterious Orb Reference #4:
Later Ryan Graves makes it clear that the sighting above was not some unique anomaly, and that such orbs were seen multiple times. We read this in the transcript:
Jamie Raskin: Are there common characteristics to the UAPs that have been excited by different pilots, and can you describe what the convergence of descriptions is?
Ryan Graves: Certainly. We were primarily seeing dark gray or black cubes inside of a clear sphere.
Jamie Raskin: I’m sorry. Dark gray or black cubes?
Ryan Graves: Yes. Inside of a clear sphere where the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of that sphere. And that was primarily what was being reported when we were able to gain a visual tally of these objects. And that occurred over almost eight years. And as far as I know, it still occurred.
Although Graves fails to tell us exactly how many of these mysterious orbs were seen in the sky, he very clearly indicates that they were seen multiple times. In fact he seems to suggest that sightings of these mysterious orbs occurred over a period of eight years, thereby suggesting that there were many sightings.
Mysterious Orb Reference #5:
In this reference a US congressman tells an account he received from military pilots.
Congressman Matt Gaetz: My office received a protected disclosure from Eglen Air Force Base indicating that there was a UAP incident that required my attention....They were out on a test mission that day over the Gulf of Mexico, And when you’re on a test mission, you’re supposed to have clear air space. Not supposed to be anything that shows up. And they saw a sequence of four craft in a clear diamond formation for which there is a radar sequence that I and I alone have observed in the United States Congress. One of the pilots goes to check out that Diamond formation and sees a large floating I can only describe as an orb, again, like I said, not of any human capability that I’m that I’m aware of. And when he approached, he said that his radar went down. He said that his flir system malfunctioned and that he had to manually take this image from one of the lenses, and it was not automatic automated.
This is a report that seems to be of great importance. We have one or more military aircraft pilots describing mysterious orbs in the sky, in a diamond-shaped formation. It's something so strange it is described as "not of any human capability I know of."
Mysterious Orb Reference #6:
Ryan Graves: "The objects that we were seeing, they were spherical, and they were observed up to Mach two, which is a very in, non aerodynamic shape."
This is an astonishing account. How could objects that were spherical move at Mach Two, twice the speed of sound? We can imagine no technology that could do that.
To get our next two references to mysterious orbs in a recent US government hearing, we must look at the transcript of the May 31, 2023 NASA public hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
Mysterious Orb Reference #7:
Sean Kirkpatrick: "The vast majority of what has been reported and what we have data on, a little less than half now, are orbs, round spheres."
Sean Kirkpatrick is the the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) set up by NASA to investigate UAPs. Speaking rather clumsily (referring to slightly less than half as a "vast majority"), Kirkpatrick tells us that apparently almost half of the UFO/UAPs are orbs.
The next reference is by the same speaker, speaking a bit later in the same NASA public hearing:
Mysterious Orb Reference #8:
Sean Kirkpatrick: This is a spherical orb metallic in the Middle East 2022 by an MQ-9. I will come back to the sensor question that David raised here in a moment. This is a typical example of the thing that we see most of. We see these all over the world and we see these in making very interesting apparent maneuvers.
You can see here a video corresponding to this sighting. Look closely at the bottom right of the video. You will see a metallic-looking orb mysteriously speeding around. Note the very interesting comment: "This is a typical example of the thing that we see most of." The implication is that mysterious orbs are the type of UAP phenomena "that we see most of."
Mysterious Orb Reference #9:
At the 32:00 mark of the video here, a 4 -hour video of the NASA conference on UAP, we see a conference screen that has the visual below. The UAP refers to "unidentified aerial phenomena." The typical morphology or shape of the UAPs are listed as "round" or "atypical orientation." I have circled the word "translucent" on the screen. Apparently quite a few of the weird sky things NASA is studying are mysterious transparent orbs.
The Congress Testimony About Mysterious Orbs Is Less Than a Hundredth of the Existing Orb Data
Although very interesting, the testimony above is less than a hundredth of the data we have regarding mysterious orbs. The facts are these:
- For decades very many photographers around the world have been getting mysterious orbs in their photos, both photos taken indoors in normal clean air and photos taken outdoors in normal clean air.
- Such photographs have been published on the Internet for decades.
- Photographs of mysterious orbs show them in a wide variety of colors. For example, using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 1491 photos I took of mysterious blue orbs. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 260 photos I took of mysterious green orbs. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 214 photos I took of mysterious pink orbs. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 231 photos I took of mysterious orange orbs. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 484 photos I took of mysterious purple orbs.
- Photographs of mysterious orbs very often show them seeming to be moving at a high speed. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 772 photos I took of what look like mysterious speeding orbs. There were never any flying insects around when I took any of these photos.
- Photographs of mysterious orbs very often show them seeming to be speeding at a rate so high that a kind of "string of pearls" effect occurs, in which we seem to see multiple position states of the same object moving very fast. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 100 photos showing such an effect. There were never any flying insects around when I took any of these photos.
- A careful analysis of the size of typical dust particles and typical water vapor particles indoors and outdoors reveals that such particles are very many times too small to explain photos of mysterious orbs taken in dry clean air. Airborne dust particles indoors are almost never greater than 10 microns, which is only about 1/1500 (one fifteen hundredth) of the area in front of a camera lens, way too small to produce a decent-looking mysterious orb in a photo (something typically taking up 1% or more of the total photo area). Outdoors, airborne dust particles or water vapor particles are almost never greater than 1 micron, which is only about 1/15000 (one fifteen thousandth) of the area in front of a camera lens, way too small to produce a decent-look mysterious orb in a photo (something typically taking up 1% or more of the total photo area). Even heavy smog outdoors is insufficient to produce orbs in photos outdoors. The only natural effects capable of producing orbs in photos are visible fog, visible mist and visible heavy dust, which will cover the entire photo area in circles.
- Orb photographers following best practices are careful to list weather conditions when photographing mysterious orbs outdoors. I have published thousands of dramatic outdoor photos of mysterious orbs in which I listed in the posts that there was no fog, mist or precipitation outdoors, excluding such things as explanations for such photos.
- Mysterious orbs appearing in photos very often have a striped appearance, which may consist of one or more very noticeable stripes. Such a thing was never predicted by skeptics claiming natural explanations of such photos. You can finger-scroll through the free online book here to see 800 photos I have taken of mysterious striped orbs.
- Mysterious orbs appearing in photos have very often shown a dramatic repeating pattern effect, in which the same distinctive pattern may occur multiple times in photos taken by the same photographer, with the pattern repetitions not occurring in consecutive photos. Many examples can be seen on this page, and some examples from that page are repeated below.
- Mysterious orbs often have a transparent appearance. Using the link here and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page, you can see 560 photos of transparent orbs. But about as often, a mysterious orb will appear as a bright circle that does not look transparent.
- Mysterious orbs have been seriously studied by PhD scientists who regarded them as something much more than an illusory effect, including scientists such as physics PhD Klaus Heinemann (whose views about them are discussed in this article) and astrophysics PhD Massimo Teodorani, the author of many peer-reviewed scientific papers including the long 2009 paper "Spherical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Scientific Observations and Physical Hypotheses, Danger Evaluation For Aviation and Future Observational Plan," a paper which tells us that "Unidentified anomalous phenomena of spherical shape are increasingly reported in many areas of the world." See here for a discussion of the most interesting parts of the long paper.
- Very many photographers other than myself have published dramatic photos of mysterious orbs, and by using the link here you can see photographs of mysterious orb taken by many other photographers.
- Although most mysterious orbs appearing in photos seem like "instant only" effects not matching persistent objects seen with the eye, very many people claim to have seen mysterious orbs with their own eyes. By downloading the pdf file version of the SCU Review 4.1 using this link, you can see (on page 10) the full January 2, 1945 New York Times cover page story reporting that US pilots had been reporting for more than a month "balls of fire" called "foo fighters" that flew along with the planes, appearing in colors of red, or in groups of three or fifteen. An analysis of reports at the National UFO Reporting Center leads to the conclusion that orb-like UFOs are more than four times more common than disk-like UFOs, with there being more than 37,000 reports of orb-like UFOs and only 8602 reports of disk-like UFOs. At the link here you can read a Washington Post account of a 1987 sighting by a Boeing 747 cargo jet pilot who reported a walnut-shaped object tailing his jet for a long time, supposedly one twice as big as an aircraft carrier. The four posts below include very many accounts of people seeing mysterious orbs with the naked eye:
- Possible reason #1: a hardware "nuts and bolts" or "saucer" bias. When it first entered public consciousness around the late 1940's, UFOs were often described as "flying saucers." People had the idea that UFOs were metal "nuts and bolts" spaceships from another planet. This may have biased subsequent investigations towards ignoring reports that do not have a saucer shape or a disk shape.
- Possible reason #2: a materialist bias towards tangible metal objects. People interested in UFOs often seem to be inclined towards materialism. We often hear such people arguing for extraterrestrial life using common but dubious arguments based on materialism, including very doubtful claims that life will appear on any planet with the right conditions, and claims that once a planet has some life, such life will have a high chance of evolving into intelligence. Often being transparent, mysterious orbs may conflict with such materialist ideas. Sightings and photos of mysterious orbs may suggest the idea that there may be some non-material intelligence or spiritual intelligence that is interacting with humans, an idea that may make materialists uncomfortable. So, when collecting evidence for UFOs and UAP, such people may tend to overlook or downplay anything like a mysterious orb (particularly one that is transparent), and emphasize reports of things that looked like they may have been metal spaceships.
- Possible reason #3: photographers of mysterious orbs are not very good at publicizing their work. This is probably a major factor. Let's take someone like me. I'm very good about publishing only entirely authentic photos of the mysterious, and I'm very good about things such as recording the date when the photo was taken, recording the weather conditions if the photo was taken outside, and also classifying the photos using appropriate tags. But I'm not very good about publicizing my work. I hear people mention that there are special methods used by Facebook pros and Twitter pros to make their work "go viral." But I'm not familiar with such methods, and I'm kind of "all thumbs" when it comes to effectively using hashtags. And so it probably is for most photographers of mysterious orbs. I could no doubt get a lot more publicity for my work if I were to pay for advertising, but my skinflint rule is to never pay a cent for advertising. Being already "in the red" because of photographic expenses that greatly exceed any earnings I made from photography or blogging, I have never made a net cent from my photographic or blogging activities. I don't wish to go deeper "in the red" by paying for advertising.
- Possible reason #4: snobbery in academia and at NASA. People with PhD's often act like snobs, and some of them would rather spend an afternoon scrutinizing the most vacuous professor speculation than spend an hour studying very good evidence gathered by laymen.
- Possible reason #5: some kind of "stick to my domain" thinking. One possibility is that people at NASA or astronomers have a kind of "my interest stops at your door" attitude, which they use as an excuse for ignoring all kinds of fascinating anomalous phenomena people report seeing or photographing inside buildings, under an excuse of "I only study sky and space stuff." That might be an excuse for turning a blind eye to all of the mysterious orb photos taken in people's home, although it would not be an excuse for ignoring the equally great number of mysterious orbs photos taken outdoors, usually in dry clean air.
Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 1 of 4)
Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 4 of 4)
Below we see some of the vast number of very interesting results I have published. First is a photo from December 9, 2014 showing a large orb in Grand Central Terminal in New York:
Next (taken with a different camera) is a strong pattern repetition occurring on the same day in 2017 (between the first and second photos I took photos with the same camera, ones that showed no such pattern):
The next shows a similar pattern repetition on another day. Again there were quite a few photos taken by the same camera in between these photos that showed no such pattern:
Below is a repeating orb pattern that I observed in photos occurring only a minute apart. An intervening photo showed no such effect.
I took the photos below about 36 minutes apart. Photos in between these two showed no such effect.
Below is a repeating orb pattern that I observed in photos taken an hour and twenty-one minutes apart. Photos in between these two showed no such thing. The pattern resembles a stick figure of a leaping ballet dancer.
In 2020 I got three examples of the "ribbon and ring" pattern shown below (many photos in between these taken by the same camera showed no such pattern).
While photographing falling water drops, which I did almost every day for many months, I would very often get a super-abundant orb pattern repetition effect, with dramatically distinctive orb patterns often mysteriously appearing and persisting for many hundreds of consecutive photos, before mysteriously disappearing. In such cases the same orb pattern would appear multiple times in the same photo, with hundreds of consecutive photos showing the same level of pattern repetition. Often a face-like orb pattern would appear and persist for hundreds of consecutive photos, with each photo showing multiple cases of such a pattern. The very long free online book here photographically documents the effect about as exhaustively as you could document anything.
All of this raises the question: why has almost all of this dramatic evidence regarding mysterious orbs been ignored by almost all of the people who have spent lots of time investigating UFOs and UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena)? I can think of several possible reasons:
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