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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 AEBJ.AL PHENOMENA Page 3 began meauurement.s. We were i r. motion at the time but ,re ve1•e able to ge·t; a very good check of 'Uhat w obsc!'Ved at the time on the road near Starvation Peak. Ue had a cJ.ea.r view of the sky to the Northwest om the WeBt, and the object wan so low over the horlzon it was possible to compare 1t not o:nly to the ste.:r•a irith which I am f'am1J.iar, but with 1--espect to Il¥)untain peaks -~t were also visible. To continue, that duration vas a.bout two second.Q. 'l'his is one of tho puzzling ~s to the meteorists. I believe I do not exaggerate -.:hen I say tila:'c ':}(:ffa of the d~tion detcrmi:nations that have bclen made 1n the case of the green f'il."'eballs have given durations right in that vicinity. Whel'ees you -take, sa.y, 100 ord:luarymeteor observations you will :tind the ·widest diversions in durations. You could take tbe same leason a.a observed by 100 people - possibly that 0 z a better example .. and there would be wide va.rietionn in the estimates of dm-ation. Dr. MaDl.e~r: Did you correlate the ardmu.tha vith ..•.. '? Dr. LaPe.z : No. T'.iJ.ere ie an azimuth factor here which I am goiDg to talk to you about, that relates to the choice of clirection. Both our observations are single station observations, no that it beeomes impossible ~am the observe.• tion mec.aure to deter.nine the x·eal path of the fireball in the atmosphere. There have been only 'three caeea vhere the.t path was determinable. one, as I rece.ll it.:- 'W'aS tbat of Dacembez- 12, a.ncrcher December 20, and f'1nally, of course, the very :.nrge fall 0,.1 January 30, 1949. Pll give you some particulars on the path3. I do wrm:c to observe, however, that even our station observations present a puzzling eharacteris·,ic to the meteorista. If you plot what are called, by meteorists, the admiosible protozons for a gi'een fireball tbat has been obse11Ved, you vill find thut they give, on the average, an approach al:most to the North, come dOffll. from the North, they are not restricted to 'l • Bow whe.t about. -I.he real patbo? I e;ave sane indications e.s to the altitude at which m.eteoriteo normally disrupt full . . . . . and cme d0m1. That relates to the loi-rest . . . . . o~ path. The green fireballs are unusual in this respect: probably that they a.re horizontal or nearly so, or that their horizontal path is traverced very lcn1 down in the otmosphere. In the ce.se of the real paths f'or wicl'l vre have be - able to make determinations so ~e;r, those are sra,phical determinations, as ve have not taken the trouble to use Chablis (t) method& or . . . . . bec~use the observstions a.re regarded aa necessarily too rough for • ema.tical niceties. Those paths are ·traversed at elevations between 8 and 10 d.lee. I defy you to find anywhere amoDg meteorists, examples of conven tional. meteorites that move over long horizontal. pa.tbs reserving nearly constant angular velocities a.nd t.herefo1·e, on the average, con.st.ant linear velocities, at elevat iomi of the order o-r 8 to 10 miles. There is a good deal of evidence that may be of value in the complete reports that a.re available hore, but since this is sn introduction, I wuld like to summarize at. this stage: the fireball which I personoJ.1y vitnesaed on the night of December 12, 1948, ws not, in my opinion, e. conventional. meteor :fall. S1!1Ce the majority of the green fireballs nave been reported to me, both before and. a:fter this December 12th occurrence., poeeess elnost all the propertielil vbich I persOllally observed on the night of December 12th, I feel that 1n all probabillty they are not themselves conven tional met,eol~ falls. Now, the easy wy out of this is -to coajure u;p an un•. conventional. type of . . . . . metcorite, vhioh comes in practically parallel to the
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