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This file is a US Atomic Energy Commission transcript of a secret conference on aerial phenomena held at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on 16 February 1949. A cover letter from the AEC Santa Fe office dated 22 March 1949 accompanies it. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz describes the New Mexico green fireballs, including the Starvation Peak sighting of 12 December 1948 and the 30 January 1949 fall over Texas. He argues they were not conventional meteorites. Edward Teller, Norris Bradbury and others discuss the missing sound and the long horizontal paths but reach no conclusion.
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Conference on AERIAL PBFJ.q<L:lENA Paae 19 of ·the American Moteor Society and s1l at once we began -oo get reports of large n1.llllbe1•a of stntiomry fireballs; not moving. The burst was there, but no motion. Now one \.'ho observes normal conventional fireball falls is aware of the fc.ct that not lout of say 500 shove actual fixity; there io always motion. So, thiG looks very, very strang • Of course, you all kno't1 what those stationary fireballs turned out to be. They v~re the self-destructive devices on Japanese paper balloona ope:raung. You bad a. ~gen filled sphere vi.th a tw•cro,m raaak of magnesium flash•lisht powder. ADd. when the ma.gnesium and the hydrogen uent off tcsether, you could 13ee it tor a long way. We got stationary fireballo but they certainly wel"e not meteoritic. My experience since I w.e auopected of psychological apparitions at the tilna I reported the3e s-ce.t:lona.ry fireballs to, tor example, Dr. Kamplan, my experience vith .... led me to be very cautious e.bout tak:lng '1lfY concern ..••. but at the seine time I feel that we shouldn't be -too hasty in gl.viDg a natural e.xple.nation to thece green f1reballs. Dr. Teller: ..... but I vould lik~ to ask, these phenomena a.re a:pparently quite bright, more luminous than normal meteorites7 Dr. La.Paz: Well., the .1ElllU!!l"Y' 30th o}le wo; I vouldJ;l.•t say 1,hat a.bout the one I eaw on December 12.. 'lila.t wne a very bright fireball., but not extraordinai:1.ly so. Dr. Tell~r: What is the chance of' get•ting pictur~a? Dr. LaPaz.: I rafer tp the one at't~t that was made on the night of December 19. We set up a pho·togra.phic patrol - the AESS, as you. probably ltnow, has been interest~ in this prqblem. ·They brou3ht a lot of sp0Cd graphics and so on a.nd set th~ up. Mr. t~ll, a member of the group .•.. , and they vere able, I th1Dk ~ night before., to photograph a. bright <Jem:lnate. But on the night af the 19th nothing we observed. The ne:tt night, however., the night of the 20th there tme an iuciclffllt which I bel.ieve might have been photographed, but by that time th~ equipment had been diesbanded and nothing w.o obtained. I chOuld think., with pN~r coverage, say 10 to l'JI,, of these should record themselves provided you do not Uf.le ~en insensitive • . • . and film such as th3 •••• Dr. Teller: Is the~ any possibility of having a wide coverage ot the sky tr-lggered 'by a pboto cell'f Dr. La.Paz: I have 9-iscussed t.bat, for eDm!)le vith Dr. Reneger., who has been very much interested i:a the apparatus, and bis answer is more or leas 1n the negative. I uDd.er(Jtand that Cornell Un1versit;y • Ge.rtline o.f Cornell .. baa p1'0duced some sort ot p.hoto-ele~tric tngger1Dg device ~ch bas been used in t):rl.s co:o:nection. I wrote him about it, asking tor reprints or 1nstnICt1one, but neve~ received a reply. Question: Do you think ,-011 are going to find film eeJlGitiw to this gre~ color fast en.ought We have sane that can't b lef-t out over 12 hours...••
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