UAP researcher/podcaster and twitter user 'UAPMax.com' claims to be in possession of 'the single best orb picture ever recorded outside of a government collection we don't have access to'.
Just opening a thread to see progress and once it is released we can discuss it here.
Also sounds a lot like the recent Turkey oceanside burst photos, with the object only appearing in one shot.
Not sure why hype needs to precede these photo releases. Keep seeing lots of talk about “reducing the stigma” about discussing UFOs, as if there is some career damage for discussing it. Meanwhile, blatant fakery and overhyping rarely seems to have lasting brand damage. Society at large seems to forgive and or forget increasingly readily.
I think most people have become cynical and dismissive of this topic because there has been so many hoax’s, let downs, and wild claims that have debunked over the years it that it’s easy and almost a default to make fun of anything new that comes out.
you mean you think OPs should be only "claims of evidence"? what a novel idea!
the worst part is by the time it is released we will have a page and half of nothing comments, which will make the actual pic harder to find in the thread! smh.
You're right, but we're as human as any of the UFOlogist and can jump to conclusions based on past experience as @Cogg84 mentioned above.
The world of UFOology thrives on hype as does Social Media, now put the 2 together. No one gets clicks and no one goes viral taking a cautious approach to telling a story. Many in the UFOlogy world write off anyone skeptical to start with, so it's all about feeding the devoted believers.
While we don't yet have the photo, we do have his public pronouncements which can be looked at and there are a number of things that give me pause reading his X feed:
The claim is the this is a firsthand witness that is also a photographer, professional or amateur is not clarified, but then it's said he has to register the photo's with the agency he is with:
So, he took these photos in his duties with whatever agency he works for? He needs clearance? Might we never see the High Res photos or any photo at all because this "agency" wont allow it and is part of the cover up? I hope not, but the ground work has been laid. If I had the best ever photo of a teleporting orb, I wouldn't be checking with my employer or the government for their OK.
Regardless of what the photo is, UAPmax is already convinced that the government already has a collection of orb photos that are really good or great, but we don't have access to them, so how does he know. This would also seem to confirm that he already believes orbs are some sort of otherworldly teleportation device that the government is covering up. So, any photo of something vaguely orb like, he is going to assume it's real.
Instead of going to a news service it's going to be a "subscribe and like" event.
Then we have a 3rd pearson involved:
I'm assuming "Steve" is UAPmax? Juan is helping to transfer the photo to Steve for analysis and release. And more about "registering" the photo in the witness's country. Do they mean copywrite? Just tells us how you captured the photo and show us the photo. If everyone knows it's your work and when and where you took it, then it's your photo.
It's an orb picture. By definition an orb in a photo is just a non-descript blob or light. Any number of things can cause this as has been shown many times over.
More hype, but with a qualifier. Hype is meaningless.
UAPMax is setting this up like a product release, not a news story.
And admits they've only seen a low-res version of the image, but it's "may be the best ever".
On the upside, there's the promise of provenance and provenience, though UAPMax seems to not have heard that image metadata can be edited at will.
I wonder why a photojournalist would release such a great picture of an orb 20m (65 feet) across through some UFO site and not a news organisation.
There are many reasons to be skeptical about this hype. We'll see if it is justified.
Technically, we have seen a *claim of evidence*, which is metabunk's purview. Yet we've not seen any evidence, merely a claim of its existence. That in itself is worthy of mocking.
All this talk of registration and an agency seems quite weird to me, as does going to a UAP twitter account-if I had a weird photo I thought showed an Alcubieere-drive using orb I'd go to a news service like the NYT that has shown quite a bit of leeway in reporting UAP stories.
This is perhaps one of the things that the UAP people are still kind of struggling with, that their subculture isn't even all that fringe or non-mainstream anymore. It gets harder and harder to act like there's some strangling all encompassing conspiracy of silencing when you get breathless frontpage coverage from popular newspapers.
This is perhaps one of the things that the UAP people are still kind of struggling with, that their subculture isn't even all that fringe or non-mainstream anymore. It gets harder and harder to act like there's some strangling all encompassing conspiracy of silencing when you get breathless frontpage coverage from popular newspapers.
Technically, we have seen a *claim of evidence*, which is metabunk's purview. Yet we've not seen any evidence, merely a claim of its existence. That in itself is worthy of mocking.
While we wait for the most important image in the history of humankind (maybe),
I've been thinking about our use of the word "orb" in this context.
It's interesting (to me anyway) how certain words/ phrases get used, widely adopted in the "UFOs are alien"/ paranormal believer communities and then get used more widely.
Why isn't a 20m/ 65 foot diameter "orb" a sphere?
Would 1960's Echo 1, the first (experimental) communications satellite, qualify as an orb?
The Ufology use of "orb" seems to have been prefigured in its use by other paranormal believers using the word to describe the (often) circular, translucent photographic artefacts due to backscatter (and sometimes internal lens reflections etc.), which they interpreted as being something unusual, perhaps spiritual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(photography)
I guess "orb" sounds more portentous than "ball" or "round thingy". UAB, "Unidentified Aerial Ball" doesn't inspire awe.
Does "orb" mean, to UFO enthusiasts, "lacking surface details"? (I'll make a prediction: UAPMax's photo won't have surface detail). -Oops, just re-checked the OP,
Arms or appendages extending. Same laser systems I reported on.
...so we can look forward to really quite extensive additional detail. We can reasonably expect to see visible laser beams emanating from the object, or details of the object in such extraordinary detail that we can surmise that it is carrying "laser systems" which would be amazing. Otherwise UAPMax's claims are bunk, at least in part.
As a kid, I loved the RAF's Harrier GR.3's, which had a Ferranti laser system in the nose, giving the aircraft a prominent snout.
But of course, you can't actually tell if there's a laser in there from external appearances- the lens at the end of the snout might give a clue as to what might be inside, but that's because we know about 70's tech and the context in which Harriers operated.
So how laser systems have been identified on the eagerly-expected ball is hard to imagine; presumably an access hatch is open for whatever reason, allowing the mechanism of a laser to be identified.
The Ufology use of "orb" seems to have been prefigured in its use by other paranormal believers using the word to describe the (often) circular, translucent photographic artefacts due to backscatter (and sometimes internal lens reflections etc.), which they interpreted as being something unusual, perhaps spiritual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(photography)
I guess "orb" sounds more portentous than "ball" or "round thingy". UAB, "Unidentified Aerial Ball" doesn't inspire awe.
Does "orb" mean, to UFO enthusiasts, "lacking surface details"? (I'll make a prediction: UAPMax's photo won't have surface detail). -Oops, just re-checked the OP,
Arms or appendages extending. Same laser systems I reported on.
...so we can look forward to really quite extensive additional detail. We can reasonably expect to see visible laser beams emanating from the object, or details of the object in such extraordinary detail that we can surmise that it is carrying "laser systems" which would be amazing. Otherwise UAPMax's claims are bunk, at least in part.
The Ufology use of "orb" seems to have been prefigured in its use by other paranormal believers using the word to describe the (often) circular, translucent photographic artefacts due to backscatter (and sometimes internal lens reflections etc.), which they interpreted as being something unusual, perhaps spiritual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(photography)
I guess "orb" sounds more portentous than "ball" or "round thingy". UAB, "Unidentified Aerial Ball" doesn't inspire awe.
Does "orb" mean, to UFO enthusiasts, "lacking surface details"? (I'll make a prediction: UAPMax's photo won't have surface detail). -Oops, just re-checked the OP,
There's definitely echos of the older "orb" photography, but I think it also relates to a common type of UFO photo or video - an indistinct blob that's only a few light pixels across. Flares and Chinese lanterns are culprits:
But any random light can be an orb:
The Aguadilla infrared footage has been described as an orb, despite never really looking spherical.
My UFO-obsessed friend regularly posts pictures of "orbs" captured by her trail camera, at very close to ground level in her woods. They're exactly what one would expect (and where one would expect them) of small insects in the light of the camera, too close to be in focus, but they always get gee-whiz responses from the other True Believers.
Then there's Patrick Johnson [Jackson], on TwitterX, a poltergeist enthusiast who has a complex theory on "orbs" (which he mostly calls spheres) that's morphed over the years from paranormal to aliens. https://twitter.com/PatrickQJackson
I'm going off-topic but Mick's link is worth a quick read.
Mr Jackson believes the orbs are part of a millennia-old Earth defence system, and poltergeist activity is some sort of side-effect, or perhaps a way of keeping people away from the locations of orb operations- one of three types of spheres described by Mr Jackson reside in (presumably 'normal') buildings. They operate 5-10 miles (approx. 8-16 km) apart from each other, so we must conclude that orb and poltergeist activity is being seriously under-reported.
...Mr Jackson – an IT database specialist – says he honed his skills on trying to understand poltergeist activity in a famous location – 30 East Drive, home to the most ‘aggressive poltergeist’ in the UK.
“I observed silver spheres flying around the house, tennis ball sized drones, intelligently controlled.
”Like marbles bouncing off the walls, hitting my face.
Unfortunately I don't think Mr Jackson managed to capture any footage of these events, which must be very frustrating for him seeing as he'd gone there specifically to investigate strange activity.
Luckily, we can visit 30 East Drive, "home of the most aggressive poltergeist in the UK", in Pontefract, West Yorkshire for an overnight stay at just £85 (just over $104) so it's pretty certain that someone will be able to confirm Patrick's observations, Link here, Haunted Rooms webpage of Haunted Breaks Ltd.
The house itself is a fairly standard-looking 1950's semi-detached, so the Earth defence spheres obviously took up residence sometime since then, maybe while the owners were at work or out shopping.
Personally, if a mysterious high-tech planetary defence system started hitting me in the face, and I realised it was acting intelligently, I'd re-evaluate some of my beliefs, but maybe Mr Jackson is more stoical. Or maybe he can't take a hint.
Edited to add: If Mr Jackson's belief that poltergeist activity is a mechanism to deter people from investigating orb operations, the sale of tickets to visit 30 East Drive demonstrates that this tactic is failing.
My first thought, at the beginning of this thread, was a big "So what?"
It almost seems self cancelling: An amazingly clear shot of an indistinct blob??
But there's "appendages exiting the orb" ??? What the hell does that mean?
And if there really were such obvious "appendages" are we still talking about an "orb"?
I do fully expect to be epically underwhelmed when the breathlessly-described pic
is finally revealed...but it seems to me that the this situation suggests that the bar is
now incredibly low: Although billions on the planet now have a (in-phone) camera on them
at all times, not only are we still not finally seeing seeing decent UFO/UAP pics,
now we're supposed to get excited about an (alleged) "orb."
Since anything that is a spec of light can be considered an 'orb', it's also very easy to fake and edit in. This video I remember saving from reddit on a random thread a while back, shows a random light that is stationary and then seems to maneuverer really quickly. Most likely a fake or parallax but interesting how camera work can affect perception.
It's useful in one sense. The goal in science is to make testable predictions. We've made a prediction: The orb will turn out to be a one of an array of prosaic objects. Or possibly so ambiguous as to remain unidentifiable. This prediction is based on empirical data that's been collected over the years.
If that prediction turns out to be true, that tells us that we are correctly analyzing the situation. And the mentality of the individual (at least) making the claims
Predictable objection (or rationalization?): You all are biased and calling this a bug in flight near the camera, because of ego, Skeptic's Disease... whatever. You made your cynical prediction and you're going to fit this case into that box rather than admitting The Truth.
I suggest that if the orb photo is released, we start a new thread to do our analysis; and we all agree not to mention our prediction in that new thread.
It's useful in one sense. The goal in science is to make testable predictions. We've made a prediction: The orb will turn out to be a one of an array of prosaic objects. Or possibly so ambiguous as to remain unidentifiable. This prediction is based on empirical data that's been collected over the years.
This doesn't really relate to testable science. It's just a lot of sniping that what is promised is a load of crap. While that is probably true the more scientific angle is to wait and see.
what a novel idea! 
