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This declassified document is a March 22, 1949 letter from the Security Operations Branch of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Santa Fe Directed Operations. It forwards a transcript of a Conference on Aerial Phenomena held at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on February 16, 1949. At the conference, Dr. LaPaz described the green fireballs, including his own Starvation Peak sighting of December 12, 1948, and argued that they were not conventional meteors. Dr. Teller and others discussed why the fireballs made no sound, and no conclusion was reached.
“Green”19 pages
•Conference on AERIAL PRENOMENA Page 12 to t:1.e univers1ty of Neu Mexico, whert? h\9 was lecturiDS, we call.ed a confer ence Yith Major Godsoe and othlain the absence ot sound. Dr. Teller: Did I und rstand you cor,:ectly that the velocity ot the object appears to be some 50 kilometers per second? Dr. Lo.Paz: No. In the case of the green i>ireballe sanething between 3 miles per second ond 12 miles per eecond. l)epeM.ing, you see, it you choose one ruled map or another. For exnnrple, let me illustrate how that aff"ects the velocity cleterm:l.nat1on. This is the one I th1nk poesibl7 best repre11ents the observations of the case ot the fireball of December 12. That is the pat~ I assu:ne the Los Alamos observers sav the same point of the curves that the Starvation Peak observers d1d, likevioe to the point ot disappearance. It we deny that possibility, the pathmipt shorten to this dotted Une. (Dr. LaPaz worked on maps ....ri~i.h Dr. Teller, explaining paths.) Drappillg from 25 to eome• thing betveen ll and 12 miles. The January .30 observation gave us our first long path. Dr. Teller: J!ow long was it? Dr. La.Paz: The firet observatio~ we bad here indicated . . . . • That vss 'because of errors in the deter.llina.t1on ot the azimuth at t.b.e point of begin• ning, made due to the faulty transit they used. But that's correct that the path runs aver 100 miles. Dr. Teller: And how long does it take? Dr. La.Paz: Duration estimatec range t'rom 5 to around 14 secon.do. I think that a 10 second av-era&re is about the beat, that vould give about 10 miles per second. Dr. Bradbury: Green ie not an unknOffl'l. color in meteors! Dr. LaPa.z: If I were to rewrite the report that I first presented on that 8\lb ject, instead of oa.ying "re.rely observed0 tbis color green, I think I woul4 DOY ea.y "never observed". You sometimes see green, Dr. ·Bradbury, but it 1a a blue green. The blue ♦-g?"een color. ie rare., but it ie observed. Por instance, Dr. Shem.an Smith9 s observation wae essentially a blue-green, but on the bluo side. Dr. Bradbury: What other colon do you see 1n meteors?
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