What is the Possible Origin of UAP Orbs?
Recently I discussed the fact that many people around the world appear to be seeing strange orbs in the sky. I also acknowledged for the first time that I had also been seeing them for several years. This has included bright orange/golden and white plasma like orbs at night but also white spherical metallic looking objects in the daytime. In this short article I think it is constructive to consider the possible origin of these objects from across the spectrum of possibilities as a thought experiment.
I would like to be expansive in my considerations for the possibilities, to include the prosaic to the fantastic, from the plausible to the incredible, to span the various options that might be included to consider as a pathway towards the development of reasonable hypothesis. With this in mind, I have constructed types of definition as a ‘catch-all’ for most of the explanations that we might consider over ten categories of possibilities which span from the material to the non-material, to correlate with actual hardware to imagined. Therefore, as illustrated in the diagram below the possible explanations go from the prosaic to the fantastic and back towards the prosaic.
We now list these ten categories and describe some of the sorts of things each one might entail as sub-categories to be considered:
Near-Tech: This is the suggestion that these objects are an invention of our own governments such as from the United States, where a lot of this activity is occurring. This may be happening as a part of a broader psychological warfare objective. This might be achieved by using ‘cloak and mirrors’ such as using holograms, lasers and other light tricks. We cannot rule this out, since governments have a record of not being honest with the public they were elected to serve, and in particular government agencies appear to operate with a large amount of self-interest, inappropriate within a democracy. Alternatively, it would be the actions of a sub-group of our government, a form of breakaway civilization that had a different agenda to the masses and would explain why even our governments appear confused. That said, some of the characteristics of the objects reported by some observers would appear to defy our known physical laws and this would require a significant explanation to account for it.
Far-Tech: This is the idea that a foreign government (such as Russia or China) is playing games with the West by demonstrating how they can easily infiltrate our air space or undertaking spying activities of certain facilities. Since the West is currently engaged in a major proxy-war with Russia, via Ukraine, we cannot rule this out as a possibility. But it would imply that these other nations have significantly leapfrogged the United States technologically. This has happened before and is one of the reasons for the start of the Space Race, when the Soviet Union placed Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit in 1957. Yet, given that the US spends way more than any other nation on military weapons development and is also at the forefront of technological developments by far, this is very difficult to believe. Not only do other nations lack the knowledge (except Russia) and personnel, but also the economic infrastructure (except China). To develop such an advanced programme does need money, knowledge and access to the critical technologies necessary for the development and trials. As pointed out, whilst Russia and China arguably have access to one, they do not have all, unless there was an unprecedented scientific military collaboration taking place for which the West is ignorant.
Earth-Natural: This is the suggestion that these objects are not conscious in the way we might think, but perhaps are an atmospheric or meteorological phenomenon that we have not sufficiently understood. An example of this might be ball lightning for example, for which it has been theorised may be released around the high-pressure regions of volcanic vents. Alternatively, we do have phenomenon like Aurora and lightning which are spectacular light displays, so could these orbs represent something in between - a ball of electricity contained within its own charge neutrality that floats through the atmosphere subject to winds or magnetic fields, having very little mass to be influenced by gravity. But then, we would also have to explain the apparently high degree of self-organisation in these orbs manifest of intelligence.
Earth-life: Another idea is that they may be intelligent and a form of life we have not yet studied sufficiently. Since the orbs often appear to be coming from or going towards an ocean, perhaps a form of jelly fish that evolved to take flight so that it could move from the ocean to the skies in a demonstration of trans-medium capability. They may be a highly intelligent form of life that does not meet our current expectations for the definition of biological organisms, but a different kind of life organised around other physics principles. Any form of intelligent life that evolved on Earth separate to us may be consistent with the crypto-terrestrial idea put forward by some. In his book ‘What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell’ the physicist Erwin Schrodinger wrote “living matter, while not eluding the laws of physics as established up to date, is likely to involve other laws of physics hitherto unknown which however once they have been revealed will form just as integral as part of science as the former…life can be defined by the process of resisting the decay to thermodynamic equilibrium”. This might indicate a need to broaden our definition for life beyond say homeostasis - a property of a system such as the concentration of a substance in solution that is actively regulated to remain near constant.
Sol-life: In our solar system there are many large planets and dozens of different types of moons. For example, Jupiter has 95 moons, and Saturn has 82 for example. Since we suspect that some of these moons do have water, and an internal energy source (i.e. Io, Europa, Enceladus) is it possible that life did evolve on one of these objects in an act of a separate biogenesis to the point of high intelligence? If it then developed an ability to traverse the space between the planets then it might come here and would be curious about us. It would represent a form of extraterrestrial, just originating from one of the other celestial objects of our own star system. Yet it is possible that from an evolution perspective that life on Earth and life on another planet of the same system could have a common origin.
Interstellar-life: This would represent the true meaning of extraterrestrial life, meaning an intelligent life that derives from the planet of another star system. Since we have now discovered over 7,000 exoplanets, and we know there at of order 100 - 400 Billion stars in our own galaxy the Milky Way, the probability of this is statistically high. It could be argued that the average distance between stars, approximately 5 light years, is too great for any life form to traverse. But the reality is that for decades physicists have generated dozens of ideas for how this could be achieved in terms of an engineering machine and so this appears possible (i.e. fusion, antimatter, solar sails, microwave sails, space drives). If we can conceive of many ways of crossing the stars from the viewpoint of our species today, when we only got into space in the 1950s and 1960s, then imagine what we could conceive several centuries from now when our scientific and technological knowledge is far more advanced. Now project that same line of thinking on to a species that may be hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ahead of us. Interstellar travel is entirely feasible. Since our present knowledge of physics indicates a limit to motion set by the speed of light, any intelligence travelling here from very far away would likely have to develop technologies that supersede this speed limit. Yet with this comes the implications for relativistic time dilation and so this might also imply they have mastered an ability to visit the past - with this comes the possibility that we are looking at entities that represent us in some far distant future.
Exo-Universe-life: There are many mysteries in modern cosmology that have not been solved, such as the nature of dark matter, dark energy, the origin of space and time. One of the ideas to come out of attempts to address these questions is the suggestion that our Universe may be one of many in a plethora of universes that we now refer to as The Multiverse. Within this, different universes may have expanded under their own inflationary rates, so that the emergent laws of physics and types of matter particles are different. This means you could have a universe that is entirely different, and alien, to the one that we inhabit. Another suggestion to come out of modern physics is the possibility of extra-dimensions of space, such as proposed from the theoretical physics of string theory. Given this, it may be possible for some kind of intelligent life, for which we may not recognise as life, to cross those dimensions from one type of reality to another. Whilst we have no experimental evidence that this is the case, there are many reasons from a theoretical point of view to suggest this may have some credibility. Since here we are also talking about exo-universe, this may also imply a spiritual component to the nature of orbs as one possibility, where they are seen as the equivalent of angels. Some of the observations also have a striking resemblance to experiences of altered states of consciousness such as through DMT, which although could be just an aspect of our subconscious, it could also be evidence of a broader nature to reality upon which our own universes is embedded and an interaction with them effectively represents a breaking through into this reality.
Default-Reality: From the significant advances in computer gaming and numerical computation, it has been proposed by some that reality may be a simulation. Indeed, some have gone as far as to argue that the probability that we are not living in a simulation is very low. If reality is a simulation, might it be possible that orbs represent some component of it that has the function of maintaining it or monitoring its constituent parts - an analogy may be the way we view insects in our natural world today such as bees collecting the nectar from a flower. Although it should be acknowledged that such a proposal would imply an intelligent designer behind the construct that is our reality and so this also tends towards a metaphysical perspective, which might also then tend towards a spiritual component, since as also written by Arthur C Clarke “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. On that basis, if an intelligent is so advanced that it can create our substrate reality, from our perspective this is the equivalent of magic and so might represent a form of God, or at least agents acting in the service of a higher creative power.
Exteriozation: This is the idea of taking what is an abstract thought of the mind and manifesting it into an apparent form in the real world so that from our senses we perceive it as explicit and external to the self. Under this option there are two major sub-options. The soft version would be that the objects are not there, but you have convinced yourself the object is there, such as by seeing patterns in nature. This would represent a form of delusion or hallucination. The harder version would be that the object was not there, but you have bought it into being by manifesting it. As the Buddha once said “with our thoughts we create the world”. This might occur for example if there is a fundamental link between the observed and the observer, as an observer dependence conscious reality. By thinking about the objects, or intelligence external to the self, we have externalized the orbs into existence, be they abstract or real, so they are an emergent aspect of our consciousness. However, the soft version would fall down when we consider the fact that the objects are often observed by multiple people, unless we are now talking about a collective exteriozation or even a form of mass hysteria.
Environmental Effect: Since the advance of the industrial revolution, we have developed a highly technological world. In particular, the development of electronic machines, which often involve the transmission of electromagnetic radiation through our atmosphere. This includes radio waves, but also other frequencies. It has been suggested that a mobile phone when held close to the human brain may raise the temperature of the fluid around the brain by as much as 1/10th of a degree Celsius. Given this, and the heavy saturation of electromagnetic waves in our environment, particularly through our power grids and wifi/satellite communication system are we sure that these technologies are not negatively affecting our brains leading to the manifestation of physical forms external to us, or at least the appearance thereof? Two possible sub-versions emerge from this. The soft version is that our technology effects our brains and causes us to hallucinate and since we are all in the same environment it is no surprise when some of those hallucinations are shared with other individuals. A more harder sub-option we might consider is that the technology is altering our brain to the effect that our senses are able to perceive a broader reality than exists outside of what we can normally perceive. In other words, the objects are there but only observed under certain conditions. This would then be analogous to seeing the human brain as like a radio transmitter where certain frequencies of reality were mostly shut off to it (for the purpose of survival in this material reality) but under the right conditions could be broadened to perceive that wider reality (which then returns us back to something like a broader nature to reality).
In considering all of the above there is another element to this which cannot be ignored and may or may not lend support towards particular hypothesis depending on our own interpretation of other phenomenon. In this article we are only discussing orbs, but we cannot neglect the fact that others have also reported seeing more fantastic objects such as flying discs. In some of those observations, the orbs have been seen exiting from the discs, which might suggest they have the function of a sub-probe from a larger craft, perhaps for the purposes of scientific reconnaissance as a type of advanced probe. We will not ponder that more here, but simply acknowledge that it is a possibility. Given this author has never personally observed a flying disc, so associated with the traditional UFO, I cannot yet concede to this hypothesis, only to state that it is not an unreasonable one to assert provided it can be shown that the other types of observations of discs appear credible.
Another element we might consider is that long distance space travel is not consistent with limited life biological organisms and so we may be looking at some form of artificial intelligent life that represents an original civilisation. Perhaps, if that civilisation had figured out how to upload its consciousness into an artificial form, they are for all purposes them. This would make them masters of time and space to a degree only imagined in our best science fiction novels. An implication of this, is that to them we would appear as like insects in comparison to their advanced form. Would their studies of us then be purely taxonomical? Their actions would appear to indicate a deeper and more profound interest in human affairs.
In summary, nobody really knows what these objects are, and more data is required to form meaningful hypothesis which can be tested or falsified. But I will say that from my own personal experience there does appear to be an intelligence behind them. This intelligence may be a distant controller, or the object itself manifest of intelligence. On this basis, I am personally inclined towards the options [6], [7] and [8], but also very open to [4]. Although, no doubt some percentage of all the above is likely playing a role (particularly [1]) which only adds to the confusion. For example, we know that the government ‘is’ also flying drones in the air, but this is likely to investigate the phenomenon and to ensure that the majority of objects seen by the public are conventional drones which dismisses the possibilities of the fantastic as a deliberate counter-intelligence operation.
My personal opinion is we are looking at something that is not a construct of our human civilization, is advanced technologically, and is intelligent to the point where it is aware when we are observing it. This certainly lends itself towards a higher form of intelligent life and is deserving of our respect and humility. Any form which is characterised by these kinds of traits, would also possess an awesome power for which we are dwarfed in comparison. The fact they have not used that power, also suggests a trait of wisdom but also compassion towards humanity and this would suggest a benign intention towards us. The recent actions of these objects, such as the blatant appearance in New Jersey, would also suggest a level of concern and urgency towards our current direction and we would be wise to pause and think.
The science of orbs may represent an exciting new field of scientific study for which I hope mainstream scientists start to examine and it should be a field of academic research at all universities that have an interest in exploring the unknown. For as the writer Arthur C Clarke once said, “the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible”. I’m personally hoping for open minds going forward and certainly plan to give this issue more attention from a physics and astronautical engineering perspective.
