If they are revealing themselves now, I'm saying if your culture is acclimated to something for 40 years, it's all they know. Sort of like wandering for 40y in the desert to create a new culture, the outcome is the same, where it's the minimum amount of time for people to not completely freak out from an ontological change as radical as the one represented by said orbs if they were extraterrestrial.

The difference between "aliens invaded us!" and, "those things that were always around? yeah, turns out they were fine." is about 40 years.