Do Microbe Swarms Form OBOLs?

Orange Balls Of Light (OBOLs) are by far the most common of UFO sightings in Indiana. I’ve written about them before. They appear and then go away. They don't behave like other UFOs, or for that matter like other Balls of Light in other states or other parts of the world. Here they appear singly or in numbers, float leasurly across the sky usually at an altitude of at least 1500 feet, and then vanish. In other parts of the world they have been reported to chase people, approach within a few feet of an observer, appear in colors other than orange, such as red and blue, and sometimes have been known to impart a physical, electrical shock to the observer. (Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah, Colm A. Kelleher, George Knapp ). They have also been reported to be associated with crop circles, cattle mutilations, and virtually every other UFO phenomena.

So what are these and are they all the same phenomena?

The other day my wife, Robin Brunner, and I were kicking the subject around and she came up with an amazing idea. Suppose at least some of the OBOLs are bioluminescent airborne microbes?

We know that microbes exist and live in the atmosphere. They are even thought to affect the weather. (See Cloudy with a Chance of Microbes. Microbe Magazine, March 2012.) We also know that many lifeforms on planet Earth are bioluminescent Could a species that is normally microscopic and therefore invisible gather together in a swarm occasionally and on this special occasion become bioluminescent as a group creating an OBOL that floats across the sky as the swarm is perhaps mating or fissioning. A spere would be a common shape for such a swarm. The Brownian motion like movement of a colony of glowing microscopic creatures might produce an effect that appears very much like a ball of fire. although it would be cold.

J. Allen Hynek and other famous UFO researchers have considered the possibility that some UFOs could be living creatures. I would like to suggest this as one possible theory for that hypothesis.

Clearly this cannot explain all OBOL phenomena. We cannot have proof of this idea until a microbe has been isolated. But this might explain some of the OBOL phenomena as it has been reported so often in Indiana.