John Birks is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder and a co-developer, with Paul Crutzen, of the “nuclear winter” theory. He authored a preprint (submitted to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics) proposing that UAP orbs are meteoritic-dust ionized plasma clouds, based on a statistical correlation (>99% confidence) between 508 nuforc orb sightings and American Meteor Society fireball reports. He sent the preprint directly to avi-loeb, who shared it with the uap-science-advisory-council. See src-loeb-meteoritic-dust-orbs-2026-07.