Proof of a haunting? What are these 'orbs' from Canon SD P&S

[sarah_fox]

<p>Alf, as an additional note, I don't doubt the sincerity of your beliefs, and I am of course unable to confirm or refute any of what you've observed. However, I can tell you that our brains are wired to make connections that often don't exist. I'm guilty of that myself, and in fact I've determined it is very easy to lose money in the stock market through technical trading in the absence of scientific rigor! In fact a good friend -- another scientist -- made a similar determination!</p>

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>I find this discussing amazing. I'm just waiting for it to move to pixies, fairies, etc. </p>

<p>Many will be amazed to know that these magical orbs increase in visibility with flash usage....and decrease immensely in clean rooms with very little dust. Yes, OOF dust is the culprit. Nothing magical or mystical. Now can we please stop with the other nonsense.</p>

[fmueller]

<p>Alf - I just wanted to make you aware of the <a href="http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html">One Million Dollar Challenge</a> of the James Randi Educational Foundation. In a nutshell, you or the "The Children Of The City" would get a million dollars from this foundation is you could prove the existence of "spirit orbs", or their increase or reduction in numbers, or the existence of "clear rainbow auras" or "electro magnetic hotspots" or "electronic voice phenomena" or any other such thing that can not be explained by mainstream science. If I had those capabilities, it would appear like easy money and an opportunity too good to miss. I wish you best of luck with your application.</p>

<p>Sarah - I was born and raised a Lutheran Protestant in Germany. In my village most people go to church on Sunday morning - they still do - and I read the bible twice in my teens. Yes, the whole thing, cover to cover. For me to call myself an atheist was a bit of a process. It wasn't until I heard <a href="

Dawkins talk</a> about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot">Russel's Teapot </a>that I finally threw the treasured agnostic label overboard. Of course as a scientist, you can never have absolute certainty. In a way, the essence of science is the embracing of uncertainty and ambiguity. But scientific uncertainty stems from the existence of evidence that is contradictory - or seemingly contradictory. It is not rational for a total lack of evidence to cause doubts about something that can not be proven. Of course it is much more polite to call yourself an agnostic than an atheist, and I respect your good manners :-)</p>

[alf_beharie]

<p>Sarah, are you saying that most of your students were/are creationists? If so, I am utterly amazed! <br>

Here in the UK, Creationism is seen as a belief almost unique to ignorant, brainwashed, religious zealots and therefore that it has no place in a modern civilised society, and especially not in a classroom environment.<br>

The only people who share such delusions this side of the pond are fundimentalist Muslims, who happily are only a tiny minority of the total Muslim population of the UK. Not supprisingly, given Darwins heritage, Evolution is almost universally accepted as the norm here.<br>

Dave, your comments on flash use coinciding with Orbs in pics are understandable, but not unexpected...Believe it or not, I did notice the coincedence too! However, instead of claiming, like you, that it is simply nonsense and dismissing it out of hand, I did attempt to find a logical explanation at the time. I theorized that the Orbs were possibly fluoresent and were therefore emitting visible light in response to the UV light emitted from the flash. This would explain why they are virtually never seen in pics taken without flash.<br>

Besides, if they are all simply dust in front of the lens then perhaps you could try and explain the very obvious human facial characterics exibited by the Orbs that I blew up and enhanced?:<br>

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/orbs/faces.html" target="_blank">http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/orbs/faces.html</a></p>

<p> </p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Alf, what can I say? I won't push any offensive stereotypes here, but yes, at that particular college in that particular town, most were creationists. Religious fundamentalism is a big thing here in the US. As this was a topic of particular interest to those students, and as the support course was pitched for non-majors (in a business school), I felt it was worth 30 min of discussion time. The topic never came up in the more serious courses I taught at my own university.</p>

<p>I don't think the faces mean anything. People see things in Rorschach ink blots and clouds in the sky. Our visual systems are designed to make sense out of nonsense, and they readily pick out patterns. There is a well known "face" on the surface of Mars that was once believed to have been built by Martians as a great work of art or as some sort of message to observers such as from Earth that life exists on Mars. However, we now understand that the face is not really a face 3-dimensionally, but rather a trick of how certain geological formations cast shadows on the Martian terrain. If you could show me a perfect likeness of your grandmother's face in an orb hovering over your father's or mother's shoulder, then I'd be more interested, but all I see is questionable smiley faces (and an OK depiction of a cat).</p>

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>Alf, if you see faces in those, you've got a bigger imagination then I thought possible. By the way, it has nothing to do with UV or fluoresent light. It can easily occur with sunlight or another bright light source coming from the sides of an images reflecting off the dust.</p>

<p>I dismissed it because this isn't the dark ages....we don't need to resort to spirits to explain a well known and well understood optical phenomena. And quite frankly, I'm surprised that some people would even resort to such silly, mystical explanations. What next? Internal lens reflections being explained as fairies. CA being explained as evil spirits? This is 2011....not 1311.</p>

[alf_beharie]

<p>Fair enough Dave, but as they say, seeing is believing, and I've seen enough to convince me there is a strange phenomenon going on that cant currently be explained by science so I'll leave it at that.<br>

Sarah, I'd hot foot it out out of that town ASAP!...Sounds like one of those towns inhabited by inbred rednecks that you find in most low budget horror movies! :)</p>

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>Alf, I agree....seeing is believing. In a clean room with no dust, you don't get orbs. So, it's either caused by dust, or the spirits seem to hate clean rooms. </p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Alf, I'm already (happy to be) out of that city! ;-) Be careful about drawing redneck stereotypes, though. You're really talking about a huge swath of the American population -- and the populations of many other countries as well. This is as much a cultural issue as educational, and a significant chunk of our cultural origins derive from the religious extremists who fled England in search of religious freedom in the New World. I find many religious fundamentalists are quite well educated. The glaring deficit in their education would generally be in the area of evolution, but I find that is true of almost everyone from both sides of the pond, including those who claim to believe in evolution (and misunderstand the various evolutionary theories).</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>The news reported finding a distressed face in an ultrasound of a testicular tumor. I hope our ancestors aren't so easily internalized. :-)<br>

<a href="http://topnews.net.nz/content/220040-face-seen-testicular-tumor">http://topnews.net.nz/content/220040-face-seen-testicular-tumor</a> </p>

[fmueller]

<p>As it so happens, there is a link between evolution and our brain's tendency to see facial features even in the most unlikely pattern. Imagine being a hunter-gatherer in the grasslands of Africa. Who do you think will survive and have offspring - the one who runs at any sign of a facial features (be it of a human enemy or a lion) in the grass, or the one who shrugs his shoulders and goes about his merry way. Even if you run a million times for nothing, it is still better than one time not to run when there was indeed a face in the grass. On an evolutionary timescale that is not so long ago, and that's why people recognize faces in photos of <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may_1/">astronomical objects</a> as well as dust specs. Take enough photos of more or less random patterns, and soon enough some will look like faces. There is your scientific explanation. If you find it lacking, and can convince the <a href="http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html">JREF</a>, a million dollars await you!</p>

<p> </p>

[Matt Laur]

Alf: the variations/features you're seeing, and which your observational bias has seen as faces, are just sharpening and

compression artifacts. These can be produced taking pictures of round white pieces of paper, too.

[alf_beharie]

<p>Really? I'll need more proof...How about you try that and show me the results so I can compare them with mine?</p>

[dzaebst]

<p>Alf, one word for you: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=d0E&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=X&ei=1PXGTtXECoW42QWN7czXDw&ved=0CCQQvwUoAQ&q=pareidolia&spell=1"><strong><em>pareidolia</em></strong></a>. Google it.</p>