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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.
, . Page 21.Conf'erenee on AERIAL PHENOMENA el.."P~r1litents. I think that if anyone o~ the UCLA Institute of Geoph;ye1cs had b~n observing., it wuld have gotten to Kaplan's ears..•.•• There are two great advantages ·i;o this area: 'f1rat, you have clear skies at night and can observe them as they come dawn., and second, (record blank tor minute or two). Dr. Hollm,ay: ..... this 'W8.8 before the war. They bad a tel.ephone network which covered a fair section ot the Eaat there. • •••• o. network so that your obeervatione . . . . . mention indicate, k:noY wat heI this to I don is doi,gQt now, but at least they- may ~ve a group ot people who ba:tte been observing. May uot be in a position to . . . . . green fireballs, but the7 might have seen them. Dr. LaPaz: My one attempt to contact . •... arid. unfortunately I did not approach b1m age.in for 1ntormat1on, but someone acquainted vith him should certainl.y ask~ they have observed any of this sort ot thing tbe~. Comdr. Mandelkorn: Well, wouldn't phenomena or this nature have been reported to tho Society, no ~tter where they had occurred? Dr. L&Paz: Yeo, l would think so. For exampl, you can consult the so-called meteor notes of the Amer"tcan Meteor Society, and popular aetronotQy, they are published from mo~th tp month with the President, c. C. Olivia, Director ot the Florida Ob. rvatory at the University of Pennsylvania. I've been through those very caretulJ.y. Tb.er 1 8 one single solitary case of a fireball which by one ot the observers - a doubly observed fireball - 80 it was possible for me to .... which one of the obeervora mentions a green color. Bot this peculiarin yellow-green vbich moat people in that vork find unusual, and in the ea.se of that the elevation determined is of the order of, ob 199 kilometers from the beginning point and rqushl¥ 100-tor the end, so I th1Jlk it is only an ordi.IID.ry fireball; nothing unusual about it. Tb.at was the only caee I found. Comdr. Mandel.koru: Aocording to recent records, where the observation c~- tions in other parts or the country satisf'actory? At least part of the time? Dr. LaPar; Well, I infer tram the fact that ve bav" had so much trouble out here and the Eut has been bra.gging about its cllmatic ad.vantages, tbat probably during the recent month.a, thq have had good observancy. I haven"t attempted a full eeale check on that. Comdr. Mandelkorn: Le~•s put it thie var then: lave there been a au:tticient nmuber ot f'1reballs reported in the last: 60 days 1n other parte ot the country to lead us to 1nf'er that bad some ot these occurred, they would have been reported? Dr. LaP&z: I think that definitely 1e true. 'lo 'llJ:f knowledge, aa far as the contacts JJve had with Olivia and so on, there wae uotbing out ot the nomal noticed in the East, and in the South, ~hall ve aay as tar~ &$ White Sanda. Whether the H&l.-vard Obeervatory aetup observed arqth1Dg peculiar or not, I don~t know. we tried away to get utormat1on. We ver.e byright tbat tolcl the gentleman in cbarge down there, 1 1m sure this Vill be interest to you, that
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