The Usually Appalling Mainstream Reviews of Origin-of-Life Research

Imagine if all of your life you had read nothing but nonsense drivel about the American Civil War. Imagine, for example, that as a high-schooler you heard nothing but nonsense stories like this about such a war:

"It all started because of a disagreement over what kind of uniforms to wear. The soldiers in the North wanted to wear blue uniforms, but the soldiers in the South wanted to wear gray uniforms. They couldn't agree, so they fought a big long war to decide what type of uniforms the soldiers would end up wearing."

And imagine that you kept hearing such nonsense accounts of the American Civil War for decade after decade, so that a typical account of that war sounded like this:

"The American Civil War was fought because the Southern states refused to be led by Lincoln, a guy with hollow cheeks and a little beard. It was mainly because the guys in the South thought that Lincoln was just too ugly to be their leader. So they tried to start their own country led by another guy with hollow cheeks and a little beard (Jefferson Davis), because they thought he was a little less ugly than Lincoln."

If you had endured something like five decades of hearing stories this bad on this topic, you might finally get to the point when you feel like tearing your hair out whenever you read a new press account of the American Civil War. That's kind of like how I feel every time I read another mainstream press account reviewing research about the origin of life. I've been reading such accounts for more than 50 years and most of the accounts have been very low in quality. It's only been a fraction of this time that I've known enough about this topic to realize how appalling is the junk that typically appears on this topic in the mainstream press. 

Like someone listing the symptoms of a disease, I can list the general features that we typically find in mainstream reviews of origin of life research.

Feature #1: Titles That Are Misleading or Ridiculous

Below are some examples:

"Can We Recreate the Spark of Life on Earth?" This is the title of the latest appalling article on this topic, published by the BBC which so often presents very bad examples of science journalism. Even the simplest self-reproducing life would be an example of extremely high organization comparable to the amount of letter organization needed to write a book. You can no more "spark your way to life" than you can "spark your way" to a new technical manual. 

Feature #2: An Utter Failure to Describe the Organization and Functional Complexity of Even the Simplest Living Thing

Part of the reasons the imaginary stories I gave above are ridiculous is that they fail to mention the most basic and important facts about the American Civil War, such as the fact that it involved fighting in which about 500,000 people died. Similarly, reviews of origin-of-life research appearing in the mainstream will almost always fail to inform us of the most basic facts relevant to such a question: the fact that every form of living thing involves a very high state of organization and functional complexity. 

The relevant facts are these:

• Even the simplest self-reproducing cell requires hundreds of different types of protein molecules, each its own different very complex invention.
• Even in prokaryotic cells (simpler than human eukaryotic cells) the average protein molecule has hundreds of amino acids.  
• Scientists have attempted to strip microbes down to the smallest level in which they can still reproduce, and find that even when microbes are reduced to their smallest complexity, they still require several hundred different types of proteins, most requiring hundreds of well-arranged amino acids. 
• Within the possibility space of all possible amino acid arrangements, functional protein molecules are as rare as functional architectural instructions within the space of all possible letter combinations. 
• Evolutionary biologists lack any credible explanation for how we get so many protein molecules that are so vastly unlikely to appear through unguided processes. As four Harvard scientists stated in a scientific paper, "A wide variety of protein structures exist in nature, however the evolutionary origins of this panoply of proteins remain unknown." 

Number of letters in the English alphabet	Number of different types of amino acids used in proteins
26	20
How many well-arranged letters do you need to make a useful paragraph?	How many well-arranged amino acids do you need to make a useful protein?
About 500	About 500
How many different paragraphs (each with a different function) do you need to make a short book?	How many different types of proteins (each with a different function) do you need to make even the simplest self-reproducing cell?
Hundreds.	Hundreds.
How many well-arranged letter parts do you need to make a short book?	How many well-arranged amino acids do you need to make even the simplest self-reproducing cell?
At least tens of thousands.	At least tens of thousands.

Feature #3: Misleading Language About Amino Acids

The mainstream press keeps misleading us by referring to amino acids using the inappropriate phrase "building blocks of life." One reason the term is misleading is that blocks are simple one-part things, but the twenty  amino acids used by living things are particular arrangements of between 10 and 27 atoms. A bigger reason the term is misleading because the phrase "building blocks of life" suggests that life could be created by assembling an unordered set of building blocks, just like the walls of a house can be assembled using an unordered set of bricks. But even the simplest life requires hundreds of proteins, and each functional protein requires a very specially arranged sequence of amino acids, vastly unlikely to arise by chance. An accurate analogy would be one comparing a cell to a book, each page or chapter to a protein molecule, and each amino acid to a letter in the alphabet used to write the book. You don't get life by piling up building blocks, just as you don't get books by random typing or dumping a truck load of scrabble blocks. Getting life would require a purposeful arrangement of 50,000+ amino acids, just like writing a usable books requires a purposeful arrangement of something like 50,000 letters.

Feature #4: Misleading Descriptions of the Miller-Urey Experiment

Misleading language about the 1950's Miller-Urey experiment is a constant feature of mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research. For decades such reviews told us that the Miller-Urey experiment was some big step forward in origin-of-life research, something showing that it was easy for amino acids to form in the early Earth. Such claims were entirely untrue. For a variety of reasons, the Miller-Urey experiment did nothing to show that amino acids would have been common in the early Earth.  The reasons include: (1) the fact that the experiment used a mixture of gases that did not match the actual atmosphere of the early Earth; (2) the fact that the experiment relied on a very specially constructed glass apparatus unlike anything that would have existed on the early Earth; (3) the fact that the experiment used a week of continuous lightning bombardments, exposing some gas to a degree of lightning bombardment trillions of times greater than any area ever would have naturally received. The original paper by Stanley Miller had the title "A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions," but that title was a lie. The continuous week-long lightning bombardment and the very special glass apparatus (unlike anything that would have existed billions of years ago) meant that the experiment never produced anything like "possible primitive earth conditions." 

            The Miller-Urey experiment

Even after scientists figured out that the Miller-Urey experiment was not using a correct measure of gases to simulate the early Earth, the misleading language about the experiment continued in the mainstream press. Mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research simply switched to language such as the claim that the experiment used gases "intended to simulate the early Earth's atmosphere," without telling us that the experimenters made a wrong guess about what such an atmosphere obtained. 

Almost never did the mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research correctly describe the degree of lightning exposure of the Miller-Urey experiment. The reality was easy to describe: in his original paper Miller had stated that his electrical bombardment had run for one full week, stating, "The discharge was run continuously for a week." Almost always the mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research would vaguely describe this as maybe "some electricity" or "a little simulated lightning" or some other phrase that tried to prevent the reader from knowing the fact that a  very unrealistic continuous week-long electrical bombardment was used.  In the latest mainstream review of origin-of-life research (an article on bbc.com), we have this very misleading description of the Miller-Urey experiment:

"They injected ammonia, methane and water vapour into an enclosed glass container, then passed an electrical spark through the beaker to simulate a lightning strike. Amazingly, amino acids spontaneously formed." 

Notice the untrue and extremely misleading language. The experiment actually involved one full week of continuous electrical sparks, but it is described as if it only used a single electrical spark. The experiment actually must have used something like a million electrical sparks. 

Feature #5: Misleading Talk About "Protocells"

The sleazy trick works like this: you get some description of a disorganized bubble, and try to call that a "protocell." A similar trick might be to find a little metal junk in a junkyard, and call that a "proto-jetliner." The difference in organization between the little bubbles labeled as "protocells" and self-reproducing cells is like the difference between a handful of junk parts and a modern 747 aircraft capable of carrying more than 100 passengers across the Atlantic ocean. The membranes of cells are actually extremely complex things requiring many different types of specialized protein molecules (each consisting of thousands of well-arranged atoms) in order for such membranes to act the way they do (rather like some intelligent gatekeeper). 

In the latest mainstream review of origin-of-life research (an article on bbc.com), we have this same silly trick once again used.  Writers can get away with this kind of nonsense because they never explain how complex a cell is. So if a reader does not know that even the simplest cell contains more than 50,000 amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right,  he might be fooled by attempts to call mere fatty bubbles "protocells."  Similarly if a child does not know that a car consists of thousands of well-arranged parts, you might be able to fool him by describing a handful of parts as a "protocar."

Feature #6: Irrelevant Talk About Hydrothermal Vents

A stock feature of the usually appalling mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research is some talk about hydrothermal vents, some areas in the ocean where water gets heated up. Usually what goes on is some trick language. In the latest mainstream review of origin-of-life research (an article on bbc.com), we have this example:

"The pores at the centre of hydrothermal vents could have played a vital role in catalysing the reaction between hydrogen and CO2. According to Lane, they have a structure almost like a cell, with a membrane containing iron sulphur minerals."

The writer has used the word "cell" and "membrane" to create some impression of biological relevance, but the item she is talking about is something as dead as a stone. The claim about something being "almost like a cell" is a claim about a mere hollow cavity in a rock. Having no order or organization, such a lifeless geological feature is not at all "almost like a cell," which is a fantastically complex arrangement of matter. And no one thinks that living cells arose from the dead hard cavities of hydrothermal vents. 

A scientific paper discusses a difficulty rarely mentioned in mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research:

"Oparin reasoned that increasingly complex particles were formed, culminating in carbohydrates and proteins: what he called  'the foundation of life'. However, there is a fundamental problem with this idea: life’s cornerstone molecules break down in the water. This is because proteins, and nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA, are vulnerable at their joints. Proteins are made of chains of amino acids, and nucleic acids are chains of nucleotides. If the chains are placed in water, it attacks the links and eventually breaks them due to hydrolysis. In carbon chemistry, 'water is an enemy to be excluded as rigorously as possible' (Shapiro, R. in 1986), which critiqued the primordial ocean hypothesis. This is called 'the water paradox.' "

The same paper discusses a huge problem ignored by most mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research: the chirality problem, that proteins use only left-handed amino acids, even though naturally forming amino acids are left-handed and right-handed in equal amounts.  

Feature #7: The Boasts About Achievements That Never Occurred

In the latest mainstream review of origin-of-life research (an article on bbc.com), we have this example of a writer telling us nonsense that cannot possibly be true: 

"In shallow pools, however, heat from the Sun would evaporate water, which would concentrate chemicals like hydrogen cyanide together, allowing them to encounter each other more frequently. Researchers have recreated such a process in the lab, successfully creating the three main molecular building blocks of life – DNA, proteins, and lipids – from hydrogen cyanide."

No, no such thing ever occurred. The chemical formula for hydrogen cyanide is HCN, so the molecule consists of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. DNA and proteins are chemicals hundreds of times more complicated than hydrogen cyanide, and DNA, proteins and lipids also use oxygen all over the place. Not even the most deliberate and careful manufacturing techniques could create DNA or proteins or lipids from hydrogen cyanide. 

What went wrong in this place of the BBC article? It seems to have been a mistake of the author simply ignoring the word "precursors." In the article the phrase "DNA, proteins and lipids" has a link to a Science magazine article (behind a paywall) that covers the 2015 Patel study "Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism," which is not behind a paywall and can be read here. Our BBC author has conveniently ignored the word "precursors" in that paper, which refers to manual human-labor-intensive work which merely created fragments of RNA, fragments of protein molecules, and fragments of lipids. It's kind of like someone reading the statement "trees are the precursors of books," and then ignoring the word "precursors" and claiming trees can grow novels and textbooks and New York Times bestsellers in your backyard garden.

Apparently because our author conveniently ignored the word "precursors," the BBC article contains this false-as-false-can-be nonsensical claim: "Researchers have recreated such a process in the lab, successfully creating the three main molecular building blocks of life – DNA, proteins, and lipids – from hydrogen cyanide." Very conveniently, such a claim gives the impression that it's real easy to make DNA and proteins -- just jiggle some hydrogen cyanide. Such an idea is about as wrong an idea as you could possibly get. 

Two days ago we had another example of the endless misstatements that appear in the press about origin of life research. A press release from Oberlin College tells us, "While these so-called 'prebiotic chemistry' experiments have successfully demonstrated how life may have originated, they cannot tell us how life actually did originate." The "have successfully demonstrated" part of that statement is a glaring falsehood. Nothing like that ever happened. Alas, our origins scientists have got addicted to boasting about accomplishments that were never actually achieved. 

Feature #8: References to Labor-Intensive Manual Lab Work Done in Labs Stocked With Hi-Tech Equipment

Again and again in the usually appalling mainstream reviews of origin-of-life research, we have irrelevant references to labor-intensive lab work that involved a great deal of purposeful intervention by scientists using modern hi-tech laboratory equipment. The problem with such references is that they refer to work that is irrelevant when considering a natural origin of life from non-life. You do nothing to show that life could have arisen accidentally by referring to some work requiring very many purposeful manipulations performed by scientists with an intention to produce some particular result.  An example of this is the reference I just quoted, which referred to a Patel paper mentioning all kinds of manual purposeful interventions by scientists aiming to produce a particular result. An article on that paper quotes someone saying,  "It is beyond the pale to pretend that anything in this paper represents undirected pre-biotic chemistry."

Orbs Had a Starring Role in NASA/Congress UFO Hearings, So Why Are UFO/UAP Guys Still Ignoring Orb Photos?

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:

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)

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:

• 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.  

The universe does not give up its secrets easily, and does not tend to reward people who try to resolve great spooky mysteries while taking attitudes such as, "I'm not going to pay attention to spooky things outside of my comfort zone."

Astronomers Can Give Scrambled Reasoning About UFOs

At the link here you can read a full transcript of the recent US Congress hearing on UFOs or UAPs, which occurred on July 26, 2023. Some government committee or group is currently using the term UAP, previously defining that term as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and then later more broadly defining it as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. The testimony last Wednesday had some very interesting quotes, and it is testimony that seems to deserve very serious follow-up investigation. But while the testimony included some riveting second-hand testimony (in which witnesses described amazing things they said other people told them they saw), the testimony was light on compelling first-hand testimony, and featured no photographic evidence. 

An astronomer named Adam Frank not long ago wrote an article for the New York Times with a title saying "U.F.O.s Don't Impress Me." Now Frank has written a response to the recent UFO testimony, one entitled "Here’s what a scientist makes of Congress’ UFO hearing." In the article Frank makes no mention of any of the more sensational quotes that came out of the hearing, which I quote in my previous post here.  We may wonder whether Frank carefully reviewed the full testimony given. What we should remember is that the vast majority of scientists writing articles about the paranormal (outside of scientific journals) have never bothered to seriously study what they are writing about. So, for example, if you read a scientist article in Scientific American mentioning ESP or out-of-body experiences or apparition sightings, there will be a 90% chance the article was written by someone who has never bothered to seriously study such topics. 

Frank's article starts out badly by giving us this quote which draws a conclusion that makes no sense:

"At their first press conference, held this summer, the team announced that only 6% of the many UAP cases they studied could not be explained. In other words, 94% of their UAP cases had earthly causes. This conclusion is consistent with other studies of this kind that have been done. So, it’s safe to say that the Earth is not suddenly awash in strange and unexplainable phenomena sailing through the skies. "

This reasoning is illogical. UAP means "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" or "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena." From a supposed estimate that only 6% of UAP reports are unexplained, we are not entitled to draw any conclusion at all about whether there are "strange and unexplainable phenomena sailing through the skies." On page 19 of the recent RAND Corporation report here, we read of "101,151  reported  UAP  sightings" in the United States between 1998 and 2022. So we may presume that the worldwide count of UFOs or UAP during that time was probably more than 500,000. Given so many UAP or UFO reports around the world, if 6% are unexplained that would still leave something like 30,000 sightings that could not be explained. 

Frank then gives us the very goofy suggestion that scientists should not pay attention to personal testimony.  He states this:

"While we could spend lots of time trying to figure out exactly what the pilots saw, I feel like that’s a dead end. Science cannot do much with personal testimonies. One problem, as every cop and psychologist will tell you, is that human memory is not a photographic record. Instead, it’s a reconstruction that can differ from the original event in many ways, no matter how earnest the reporters are. But what’s even more important, and as I describe more fully in the book, is that to really do science you need hard data collected through rational search strategies from instruments you fully understand."

This is a very silly thing for a scientist to say. Documenting, analyzing and classifying personal testimonies is one of the most important jobs of some types of scientists.  The fact that human memories are not photographs does not excuse a scientist from the responsibility of documenting, analyzing and classifying personal testimonies. Frank's appeal here to cops (policeman) and psychologists is laughable, because documenting, analyzing and classifying personal testimonies is one of the most important job responsibilities of policeman and psychologists. The idea that you can only do science using "instruments you fully understand" is nonsense. A very large fraction of scientific data is gathered by scientists recording things seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, knowledge not obtained by using instruments such as telescopes and microscopes. There are very many things scientists can do with personal testimonies:  publish them, summarize them, analyze them, classify them, corroborate them, quantify them, correlate them, index them, tag them, try to explain them, and ponder their consequences. 

Only an astronomer would make the claim that you can only do real science using instruments. Astronomers spend their lives staring through telescopes or coldly analyzing data coming from space telescopes, involving objects in distant space.  It's a great job for people who don't love dealing with other people. Anyone is entitled to such a career path if they want to pursue it, but we should heap scorn on such people if they ever try to evoke some "science is only done with instruments"  principle, which is every bit as false as the claim that medicine is only done with instruments such as scalpels and X-ray machines. 

The idea that some observation becomes more reliable when it occurs using metal instruments is not a sound one. The very introduction of such instruments often creates all kinds of additional possibilities for error, for maybe a scientist didn't use exactly the proper settings when using his fancy hi-tech instrument. For example, computerized telescopes have fancy interfaces for moving the telescope to an exact spot in the sky; and if you don't use such an interface just right, your telescope will end up pointing at the wrong little spot in the sky. And it is just as easy for scientists to commit very bad errors when using instruments as when using their unaided eyes. For example, nowadays we see a huge proliferation of poorly designed junk science fMRI bran scan studies producing mainly false alarms. All that junk science comes from scientists who used metal instruments. 

In his next paragraph Frank speaks in an equally illogical manner, making this claim:

"If my colleagues and I ever want to claim that we have detected signatures of life on alien planets light-years away, we will have to know everything about our instruments: how they respond to light when the telescope is at 40°F and how that response changes when the temperature goes up to 60°. The exact same type of knowledge is required to determine whether a UAP accelerated in ways that no human technology could reproduce. Personal testimony, onboard targeting cameras, and even military radars cannot do that."

No, any of these things would be sufficient to tell whether a UFO accelerated in ways that no human technology could reproduce, given sufficient speed of the UFO. Frank seems to be making here some strange assumption that makes no sense. Is he evoking a principle that you can't know how fast something is moving unless you use some technology and fully understand that technology? That principle makes no sense. Anyone standing on the edge of a highway can estimate fairly reliably how fast a car is moving. And the police officers who use radar guns to reliably determine the speed of speeding cars often  don't understand the details of their technology.  

Frank then states this:

"There is no reason, based on any existing science, to take these truly stunning claims seriously. I’m not changing this position until somebody ponies up some actual artifacts (which I will note are always promised to be coming but never show up). In other words, show me the spaceship."

This sounds like Frank is evoking a principle of "ignore the evidence for something until you have conclusive evidence for that thing."  Thankfully, scientists have never followed so senseless a rule, which would have prevented them from discovering most of the things they have discovered. The process of scientific discovery typically starts out with a scientist getting only weak signs or signals of something, what salesmen call "leads." If scientists follow up with years of additional diligent inquiry, they may end up getting proof of the thing or effect investigated.  "Don't pay attention until you have conclusive proof" is a rule that would cripple science. I may note that if you wanted an example of a group of scientists who do not follow such a rule, and spend entire careers investigating unproven things based on weak evidence, you could not find a better example than Frank's own group of scientists: astronomers. The modern astronomer spends a good  fraction of his time trying to prove the existence of dark matter and dark energy, mysterious things that have never been directly observed.  

We should also note the strangeness of Frank's claim "There is no reason, based on any existing science, to take these truly stunning claims seriously." Astronomers such as Frank frequently try to persuade us that extraterrestrial life exists, based on the large number of extrasolar planets that astronomers have discovered.  In fact, later in the article Frank says, "I know that the astronomical telescopes, technologies, and techniques coming online now mean we will soon be able to sniff out life in the atmospheres of alien worlds."  If we accept the claims that people such as Frank make, that would provide a very large reason, based on existing science, why one should take seriously claims of extraterrestrial visitors, and diligently investigate such claims. 

I may note that the claim by Frank just quoted is an untrue one. He certainly does not "know that the astronomical telescopes, technologies, and techniques coming online now mean we will soon be able to sniff out life in the atmospheres of alien worlds."  Even the simplest life is a state of organization so vast that we should never expect life to arise by chance chemical combinations even given billions of planets in each of billions of galaxies. The simplest self-reproducing cell requires something like 90,000 very well-arranged amino acids (consisting of a total of roughly a million very well-arranged atoms), and the chance of getting that from chance events is very much like the chance of typing monkeys producing a grammatical, well-written 300-page instruction book. It is possible that there is very much life in the universe, but only if some purposeful agency is at work to help produce such life.  If the origin-of-life dice are not "loaded" to overcome the prohibitive odds against natural abiogenesis,  it is improbable that life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, and improbable that life will be discovered on another planet anytime in this century. We have in the quote above a very good example of something that is constantly occurring: scientists claiming that they know things they do not at all know. 

Frank claims to "know that the astronomical telescopes, technologies, and techniques coming online now mean we will soon be able to sniff out life in the atmospheres of alien worlds." He's talking about things like the James Webb  Space Telescope. That telescope has already been operating for 20 months, and has not succeeded in sniffing out life or discovering life. There's no particular reason to be optimistic that it will be able to do in the near future what it failed to do in the first 20 months of its existence. 

Another astronomer who has given us scrambled reasoning about UFOs is astronomer Seth Shostak, who has spent decades heaping scorn on people who claim to see unidentified things in the sky.  It would be a rather pessimistic but at least an internally consistent position for someone to maintain (based on the extremely high organization and functional complexity of even the simplest living cell) that extraterrestrial life is extremely rare or nonexistent, and that we therefore should not expect to be getting visitors from other planets. That's not what's going on with Shostak. He is supremely optimistic about the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy (maintaining "our galaxy should be teeming with civilizations"), but seems likes someone always heaping scorn on the idea that any such civilization might have recently visited our planet. 

Shostak's essays on this UFO topic always seems like hasty armchair reasoning rather than the work of a careful scholar of anomalous things in the sky. He gives the impression of someone who cannot be bothered to get his hands dirty by closely investigating individual observational cases.  In an article entitled "Aliens There But Not Here," Shostak gives some extremely bad armchair reasoning. First, he tries to insinuate that traveling between solar systems is too difficult. He tells us that having an interstellar rocket would require "100 million times as much energy as a NASA rocket." But that's no reason for skepticism, as an extraterrestrial civilization much older than ours could surely make rockets using that much energy.  Then he makes this ridiculous objection: "High velocity travel though space means bulldozing through the dust and gas that bathe our galaxy at a blistering pace, turning it into tiny bullets that will pierce the hull of any rocket and quickly dispatch the biology within." Galactic dust has only very sparse densities, and is concentrated in dust clouds, which could easily be avoided by an interstellar spacecraft. And even if traveling through dust so sparse, a technology vastly older than ours could easily deflect such dust, or simply build ships with hulls strong enough to not be damaged by it. Shostak very strangely seems to think that a hull of a starship built by extraterrestrials with godlike powers would not be strong enough to protect against "tiny bullets." He then tries to insinuate that imagining interstellar visitors requires postulating new physics, saying, "Presumably, extraterrestrial visitors have mastered something akin to warp drive or breaking into hyperspace."  No, it is well-known that there are relatively simple spacecraft construction techniques that would be capable of traveling between stars, such as building a multi-generation starship or building a starship populated by robots or creatures with very long lifespans or creatures extending their lifetimes by using hibernation techniques. Such possibilities do not require any "new physics" things such as warp drives or hyperspace travel. 

The next part of Shostak's article is equally fallacious. He attempts to insinuate that there's something implausible about us getting interstellar visitors now, because we didn't get them in the nineteenth century. That makes about as much sense as arguing, "He couldn't have traveled to Chicago in 2017, because he didn't go there in 2016."

Of course, there's a  perfectly good answer to such an objection, one that mentions how Earth has been leaking radio signals for many decades, that would have alerted nearby civilizations to our existence. Such signals have escaped Earth for about 75 years, meaning (allowing for a near-lightspeed travel) that stars within about about 37 light years might be more likely to be the home planets of interstellar visitors.  Shostak's answer to this objection is scrambled logic:

"The simple fact is that there are fewer than two thousand stars within thirty-seven light-years. It beggars belief to say that the cosmos is so densely packed with aliens that some are camped out so near to us. If you assume that there are between one and 100 million alien societies in our home galaxy now (an optimistic estimate), then the closest would be a few hundred lightyears’ distant. They won’t know about us."

Shostak's logic here is very bad. Making completely arbitrary estimates of the number of civilizations in our galaxy (estimates which have an uncertainty factor ranging from about 10,000 on the upside to about 100,000,000 on the downside), Shostak is arguing here that the galaxy must have just about as many extraterrestrial civilizations as he thinks, and not ten times more or 100 times more.  Given the very large uncertainties, such logic makes no sense even before we consider the issue of interstellar colonization. Once we consider that issue, we can see Shostak's logic as being worthless. Once one civilization arose in one solar system, there would be a good chance that it might spread around to many other solar systems, something that can be called interstellar colonization.  So if you estimated that intelligent life naturally arose on 100 million planets in our galaxy, and if you pay attention to the possibility of interstellar colonization, then you should think that there are now many billions of inhabited planets in our galaxy, because of the tendency of intelligent life to spread from one solar system to another. Once you get that estimate, then you get  extraterrestrial civilizations within 37 light-years of Earth. 

I mention these points merely to rebut Shostak's reasoning on this matter, not because there is any need why a believer in spaceships from other planets visiting today's Earth needs to defend the idea that an extraterrestrial civilization would exist within 37 light-years of Earth or 100 light-years of Earth. A civilization vastly more advanced than ours would be able to build multi-generation starships capable of traveling many hundreds or thousands of light-years, in voyages lasting very many generations. The very hard part is getting life on a planet, and then getting civilized intelligent life. Creating ships that can cross many light years (once you already have an interplanetary civilization) is child's play, relatively speaking.

It seems that when mainstream scientists other than parapsychologists write about the paranormal, they usually give us their laziest efforts, failing to be diligent in either scholarship or logic. It's as if their rule was: when writing about the paranormal, just "phone it in." An example of the lazy responses scientists have given to the US Congress UFO hearing is a tweet by physicist Brian Cox, in which he stated, "I watched a few clips and saw some people who seemed to believe stuff saying extraordinary things without presenting extraordinary evidence."  How very lazy, to scold people based on impressions got after you just "watched a few clips" rather than watching the entire hearing (easily available on youtube.com) or reading a full transcript of the testimony.  

Postscript: Seth Shostak has written another anti-UFO article. I guess he has time for this because nothing much is going on in his fruitless field of searching for radio signals from extraterrestrials. In the article Shostak gives us another example of defective astronomer reasoning on UFOs. He states this:

"There are thousands of satellites orbiting Earth. The majority sport cameras aimed downward. Actual alien craft in our airspace bigger than an office desk would likely be visible to satellites that — among other things — supply imagery to Google Earth. "

No, it is not true that the majority of satellites are satellites devoted to photographing the Earth. And there is no particular reason to think that a small UFO entering the atmosphere would have been picked up by some camera devoted to photographing Earth's surface. Google Earth photographs each little spot on our planet only very rarely. And some UFO picked up by a Google Earth photo would probably just be ignored.  

Then Shostak asks this: "And why is it that the aliens at least seem to invariably set their navigation hardware to visit America and not some other country that might not feel the need to keep these visitors under wraps?" He links to a map of UFO sightings that shows plenty of them in England, refuting his own insinuation. The UFO sightings map here shows very many UFO sightings in France and Spain, and the map here shows very many in Europe.  In his new article Shostak provides further evidence supporting my claim in this post that "when mainstream scientists other than parapsychologists write about the paranormal, they usually give us their laziest efforts, failing to be diligent in either scholarship or logic."