The Aura Camera Problem

Every few months, a new post goes viral promising proof that your body glows with an invisible field of energy. The images look convincing: rainbow halos around hands, coloured bubbles hugging the body, captions about “science finally proving your aura is real.” This time the tool of choice is the GDV camera, a descendant of Kirlian photography. Supposedly, it shows your emotions in real time. Radiate gratitude, your field brightens. Feel fear, it shrinks. Love makes you luminous.

There’s a snag. What the GDV camera actually records is a coronal discharge: moisture, heat and electrical conductivity dancing under high voltage. Put a wet leaf under it and you’ll get the same rainbow glow. Emotions don’t shift the field directly, sweaty palms do. Temperature, humidity, skin oils, pressure, even the grounding of the machine itself all change the image. The “aura” is more physics than metaphysics.

That doesn’t mean the idea of a human field is complete nonsense. We do broadcast in measurable ways. Heat, pheromones, electromagnetic noise from the heart and brain, all of it spills out into the space around us. You can measure a heartbeat with a sensor pressed against the chest, or with a sensitive enough magnetometer across the room. The science is real, it just doesn’t look like neon halos in Instagram reels.

But the myth persists because it scratches an itch. People want love to be visible, fear to leave a shadow, joy to light up a room in a way that can be captured on camera. And in a way, that’s not wrong. You don’t need rainbow fingers to feel the charge when you walk into a room after an argument. The energy is there, it just doesn’t need a $5,000 aura machine to prove it.

So yes, you have a field. No, it doesn’t look like a psychedelic screensaver. And if you want to test how your emotions shift the space around you, you don’t need a GDV camera. Just try walking into work on a Monday morning and see what happens.