FT272


What ought to be the passing bell for ‘orb’ phenomena rang in the autumn in the form of research published by Steve Parsons of the group Para.Science. Photographs of anomalous luminous spheres and dots have dogged ghost-hunting since the end of the 1990s, and most informed opinion now considers them nothing more than artefacts generated by modern cameras. The reflections of tiny particles in the air appear on pictures because the typical flash unit of a camera in use today is much closer to the lens than with older models. Thus, those particles of dust you see in a beam of sunlight, bobbing around with air currents and Brownian motion, show up as orbs when digital cameras are used.