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Green fireballs are a type of unidentified flying object (UFO) that has been reported since the early 1950s. Early sightings primarily occurred in the southwestern United States, particularly in New Mexico. Although some ufologists and ufology organizations consider green fireballs to be of artificial extraterrestrial origin, mainstream, non-pseudoscientific explanations have been provided, including artificial satellites re-entering earth's atmosphere and bolides.

Early reports and responses

Early observations of green fireballs date to late 1948 New Mexico, and include reports from two plane crews, one civilian and the other military, on the night of December 5, 1948. These crews described the observed fireballs as a bright "green ball of fire" and "like a huge green meteor". On December 8 another aerial observation of a green fireball was reported by two pilots. In a letter to the U.S. Air Force dated December 20, Lincoln LaPaz, an astronomer from the University of New Mexico, wrote (as reported by the ufologist Kevin Randle) that the observed objects were atypical of meteors. On January 13, 1949, the Director of Army Intelligence from Fourth Army Headquarters in Texas wrote that the green fireballs " the result of radiological warfare experiments by a foreign power" and that they "are of such great importance, especially as they are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive installations, that a scientific board ...study the situation."

A February 1949 conference at Los Alamos attended by members of Project Sign, scientists including Joseph Kaplan and Edward Teller, and military personnel was unable to identify the origin of the observed green fireballs; secret conferences at Los Alamos and elsewhere, later in 1949 and addressing green fireballs, were also claimed by Edward Rupelt and ufologists including Jerome Clark to have convened. In December 1949 Project Twinkle, a network of green fireball observation and photographic units, was established but never fully implemented. It was discontinued two years later, with the official conclusion that the phenomena were likely natural in origin.

Opinions of Los Alamos scientists

Edward J. Ruppelt, director of the USAF Project Blue Book UFO study, stated he visited the Los Alamos National Laboratory in early 1952 and spoke to various scientists and technicians there, all of whom had experienced green fireball sightings. None of them believed they had a conventional explanation, such as a new natural phenomenon, secret government project, or psychologically enlarged meteors. Instead, the scientists speculated that they were extraterrestrial probes "projected into our atmosphere from a 'spaceship' hovering several hundred miles above the earth." Ruppelt commented, "Two years ago I would have been amazed to hear a group of reputable scientists make such a startling statement. Now, however, I took it as a matter of course. I'd heard the same type of statement many times before from equally qualified groups."

Astronomer sightings of green fireballs

Other astronomers besides LaPaz known to have sighted green fireballs in New Mexico during this period were Clyde Tombaugh, who in 1956 said he had seen three, and Dr. Donald Menzel, who sighted one in May 1949 near Alamogordo. In a letter to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, Menzel admitted the phenomenon must be real and expressed puzzlement, wondering why the fireballs should be so confined to New Mexico if they were natural phenomena. Menzel eventually became a famous UFO debunker, and in two of his books stated he was never puzzled by his sighting, instantly identifying the object as an ordinary meteor fireball.

Atomic testing and fallout theory

A recent theory of the green fireballs was introduced in Robert Hastings' 2008 book UFOs and Nukes. Although it had been a concern from the beginning to military intelligence that the sightings seemed concentrated near sensitive nuclear facilities such as Los Alamos and Kirtland AFB, researcher Dan Wilson discovered that later heavy concentrations of sightings might also be correlated with atomic tests that began in Nevada in January 1951. In particular, green fireball sightings, and other reported UFO sightings, seemed to follow the drift of the fallout clouds as winds carried them into other states.

Hastings cites a number of examples from Wilson's research. Perhaps the most graphic example occurred during the "Buster series" of atomic tests on November 1 and 5, 1951, which were accompanied by so many reported green fireball sightings in states affected by fallout, that even the New York Times carried a story on November 9, "Southwest's 7 Fireballs in 11 Days Called 'Without Parallel in History'." Dr. LaPaz was widely quoted saying, "There has never been a rate of meteorite fall in history that has been one-fifth as high as the present fall. If that rate should continue, I would suspect the phenomenon is not natural... don't behave like ordinary meteorites at all."

Initially the green fireballs were reported in Arizona and New Mexico as the fallout clouds left Nevada, but as the clouds spread out and drifted further east, south, and north, green fireball sightings then followed in Texas, northern Mexico, Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, and New York. Portions of the fallout also drifted west into the Los Angeles area on November 7, followed the next day by a green fireball sighting there.

Time magazine also took note on November 19, in a somewhat satirical article titled "Great Balls of Fire." In the article, they lightheartedly speculated that the green fireballs were connected to the atomic testing.

Summarizing the rash of fireball sightings in November 1951, Wilson commented, "Some researchers imply that the radioactivity itself was producing the green fireballs, possibly as an electrostatic effect. Dr. Lincoln La Paz thought otherwise. He said that the green fireballs move too regularly and had been sighted earlier, on a number of occasions, at the Los Alamos and Sandia atomic labs, where no measurable radiation was released, as well as at Killeen Base, in Texas, where the weapons were simply stored. So it seems that the electrostatic theory doesn't stand up."

Wilson concluded, "We can make one statement of fact: the fireball sightings—green or otherwise—occurred in areas that received radioactive debris from Operation Buster. Was this just coincidence, or a planned occurrence? We simply don't know, so all we can do is to continue to collect data and see if some overwhelmingly convincing pattern emerges." Wilson nonetheless felt the evidence pointed to the fireballs being real, artificial, and those responsible having some sort of agenda."

Hastings then noted similar comments by Project Blue Book head Edward Ruppelt, citing the opinion of a number of Los Alamos scientists on the green fireballs when he visited in early 1952, that they might be extraterrestrial probes from an orbiting spacecraft. (See Opinions of Los Alamos scientists above.)

Condon Committee theory

In the 1969 Condon Committee UFO report, astronomer William K. Hartmann thought the green fireballs might be explained by lunar material ejected during recent meteor impacts on the Moon's surface . Hartmann's reasoning was that such ejected lunar meteors could account for the abnormally low velocities calculated for the green fireballs by LaPaz of about Earth's escape velocity, that is, much lower than normal meteor velocities. Hartmann further claimed, without explanation or elaboration, that "the predicted characteristics match those of the 'green fireball episode'."

However, an object coming from the moon would enter the earth's atmosphere with a speed almost as high as the escape velocity of the earth, 11 km/s. And the theory would not account for the many other anomalous characteristics of the green fireballs detailed by LaPaz, such as strong confinement to the New Mexico area, lime-green color, low altitude yet absence of sound, absence of smoke trail, and absence of meteorite fragments. Despite the entirely speculative nature of Hartmann's hypothesis, it is sometimes cited as scientific fact: for example, astronomer Carl Sagan presented it as such in his Cosmos television series in 1980 .

Green fireballs revisited (1965)

LaPaz's last known comments on the green fireballs occurred in 1965 during a visit by astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book. According to Hynek, LaPaz believed the fireballs were the most important aspect of the UFO phenomenon, and that the fireballs' anomalous characteristics had never been adequately explained. LaPaz continued to believe the green fireballs were artificial, but now believed the fireballs were secret projects of the U.S. government. He also accused Hynek, Project Blue Book, and others of being part of "a grand cover-up for something the government does not want discussed".

Green fireballs outside the United States

There have been reports of green fireballs outside the U.S. and long after the early days of Project Twinkle often near sensitive government or military bases: Randles and Houghe note that a Royal Air Force pilot had a near collision with three unusual green fireballs near Manchester, England, and fireballs were also sighted near a nuclear power plant in Suffolk in 1983 (Randles and Houghe, p. 92).

There was also a sighting of a green fireball in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada in the summer of 2011. Cold Lake notably has the largest air force base in all of Canada, and after several local protests in the 1980s, Cold Lake no longer has nuclear weapons.

On October 31, 2016, a green fireball was witnessed over the predawn skies of Niigata Prefecture in northern Japan. Another fireball was spotted in Kildare, Ireland on the 22 November 2016. On November 26, 2016 another was spotted just north of Calgary, Alberta around 6:45 local time.

In South Africa, a green UFO was spotted 1000 feet in the sky of Jeffreys Bay. A Boeing 737 cargo aircraft captain and co-pilot, flying from Cape Town International Airport to Port Elizabeth International Airport, reported seeing what appeared to be a green object increasing in altitude past the cockpit of their aeroplane, reaching to about a thousand feet into clouds above them, and then returning towards earth at high speed past the cockpit of the aeroplane," NSRI spokesperson Craig Lambinon said. "The sighting was reported to air traffic control at Port Elizabeth International Airport who requested NSRI's assistance to investigate the possibility that an aircraft or craft may be in difficulty." Lambinon said the NSRI's Jeffreys Bay team monitored the matter throughout the night. "The green object has not been seen since and there are no reports of anyone, or craft or aircraft overdue or missing."

On June 17, 2020 a green fireball has been seen flying over Pilbara, Australia and various other places in the region.

See also

• List of UFO sightings
• UFO conspiracy theory
• Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird emits green fireballs when igniting

References

1. ^ Ruppelt, Edward J. (1956) "Report on Unidentified Flying Objects", DoubleDay
2. ^ Carpenter, Joel. "Green Fireball Chronology". Project 1947.
3. Randle, Kevin D (2014). The Government UFO Files: The Conspiracy of Cover-Up. Visible Ink Press. p. 109. ISBN 9781578594986.
4. ^ Clark, Jerome (1956) "The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial", Visible Ink Press
5. "DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES AIR FORCE WASHINGTON". Project 1947. March 1949.
6. E. Gross, Loren (1982). "UFOs: A HISTORY January - June 1949" (PDF). Center for UFO Studies.
7. Ruppelt, Chapter 4
8. Menzel letter, May 16, 1949, cited at an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board meeting on the green fireballs in Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 1949. The quoted section read, "Circumstances force me to conclude that the phenomena described are actually real. With regard to Dr. Kaplan's explanation, which deserves very serious consideration, I merely raise the question as to why the phenomenon seems to be confined to the Alamogordo region."
9. For example, in contrast to his 1949 private statement to the Air Force that he didn't find the meteor explanation totally adequate, Menzel later wrote in his UFO debunking book "The UFO Enigma" (1977) with Ernest Tavres that, "He and several other astronomers present observed the bright green object as it slowly traversed the northern sector of the heavens, moving from east to west: they quickly and unequivocally identified it as a meteor, or bolide..."
10. Robert Hastings, UFOs and Nukes, 2008, pp. 64-84.
11. Hastings, 64-70
12. Hastings, 70
13. Steiger, pp. 132, 136
14. Blog listing modern green fireball reports from witnesses
15. "Mysterious green light 'fireball' spotted in Japan sky". The Telegraph. November 2, 2016.
16. "Fireball that lit up Pilbara sky 'something special', but scientists not exactly sure what". ABC News. June 15, 2020.
17. "Ominous Green Fireball Lights Up Skies Over Australian Outback". Gizmodo. June 15, 2020.

Sources

• Jerome Clark, Unexplained! 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomen, Visible Ink Press, 1993.
• Jerome Clark, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial, Visible Ink Press, 1998.
• Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956, Chapt. 4
• Bruce Maccabee, The UFO-FBI Connection, Llewellyn Publications, 2000
• Brad Steiger, Project Blue Book, Ballantine Books, 1976 (Contains letter from Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Dr. LaPaz expressing final opinion on green fireballs)
• Jenny Randles and Peter Houghe; The Complete Book of UFOs: An Investigation into Alien Contact and Encounters; Sterling Publishing Co, Inc, 1994; ISBN 0-8069-8132-6

External links

• Transcript of 1949 Los Alamos conference on green fireballs
• Project Twinkle final report
• Links to other green fireball documents
• Project Twinkle chapter from Dr. Bruce Maccabee's UFO/FBI Connection book
• Maccabee's "White Sands Proof" essay, similar but more detailed discussion of the green fireballs and critical collected evidence omitted from Twinkle final report.
• Another article on green fireballs and Project Twinkle
• 1952 Life magazine article. Discusses UFO evidence, green fireballs, and LaPaz's sightings and findings.
• NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Photo of a meteor with a greenish tint in tail (20 November 1998)
• Skeptical witness of a green fireball

• Unidentified flying objects