Talk:Green Fireballs

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Are we a race of cavemen who get spooked every time a meteor falls across the sky?

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[edit] Disputed

According to Watch the Skies, by Curtis Peebles, 27-29, "In mid-February 1949, a meeting was held at Los Alamos to discuss the green fireballs. Making up the group were military officers, Los Alamos scientists, La Paz, atmospheric physicist Dr. Joseph Kaplan, and Edward Teller. ... Most had seen a green fireball. La Paz led a group who believed the green fireballs were not natural objects. ... Most people at the meeting felt that green fireballs were simply unusual meteors. Green meteors, although not common, where known. ... After two days, the group concluded that green fireballs were a natural phenomenon." Bubba73 (talk), 00:50, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I've added an external link on the main page to the actual final report of Project Twinkle. A small quote: "There has been no indication that even the somewhat strange observations often called "Green Fireballs" are anything but natural phenomena. " Bubba73 (talk), 16:24, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Quoting from [1]
... "This was one conference where there was no need to discuss whether or not this special type of UFO, the green fireball, existed. Almost everyone at the meeting had seen one. The purpose of the conference was to decide whether the fireballs were natural or man-made and how to find out more about them. "...
... "People who were at that meeting have told me that Dr. La Paz's theory was very interesting and that each point was carefully considered. But evidently it wasn't conclusive enough because when the conference broke up, after two days, it was decided that the green fireballs were a natural phenomenon of some kind. " ...
and ... "He mentioned Dr. La Paz and his opinion that the green fireballs might be man-made, and although he respected La Paz's professional ability, he just wasn't convinced." ...
... "From the conversations, I assumed that these people didn't think the green fireballs were any kind of a natural phenomenon. Not exactly, they said, but so far the evidence that said they were a natural phenomenon was vastly outweighed by the evidence that said they weren't. " ...
La Paz had a different opinion, but "...He hoped that they were a natural phenomenon..." Bubba73 (talk), 18:28, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


This is simply bunk! Don't take my word for it. You can read the transcript of the meeting online here: [2]

As you'll see if you read it, most of the meeting was devoted to La Paz describing his findings to date and a lot of questions being asked of him. It is simply not true that "most people at the meeting felt felt that the green fireballs were simply unusual meteors." It is more proper to say that they mostly deferred to La Paz's expertise, were puzzled, and had no explanation. Scientists like Teller and Bradbury did speculate about possible natural origins like meteors but agreed that findings like flat trajectories and absence of sound would probably ruled that out. Teller suggested possibly an atmospheric electrical phenomenon, but Bradbury noted that in itself would have problems as an explanation.

Peebles statement that "green meteors, although not common, were known" is also misleading and was dealt with at the conference. As La Paz notes, the green fireballs were a lime-green or yellow-green, but "green" meteors, besides being rare, were actually blue-green:

Dr. Bradbury: Green is not an unknown color in meteors?

Dr. LaPaz: If I were to rewrite the report that I first presented on that subject instead of saying "rarely observed" this color green, I think I would now say "never observed". You sometimes see green, Dr. Bradbury, but it is a blue-green. The blue-green color is rare, but it is observed. For instance, Dr. Sherman Smith's observation was essentially a blue-green, but on the blue side.

...Dr. Bradbury: But it's apparently a yellowish-green we're talking about here. If you can see a bluish-green, you can also see yellows and whites.

Dr. LaPaz: There is some defect, possibly in the vision, that requires a pretty high intensity in that yellow-green before it's noted in a meteor fall.

(Please note that this means that your example that you inserted at the end of the article of "green" meteor is also misleading. It is instead an example of a blue-green meteor mentioned by La Paz, not the strange yellow-green fireballs.)

Peebles is also wrong about the meeting lasting two days. It doesn't seem that Peebles bothered to read the minutes and just made up most of his statements about what transpired.

Please remove the "disputed" flag. There is nothing to dispute here other than the accuracy of Peebles.

Realize Bubba that just because a skeptic writes something that you apparently want to believe doesn't mean they're telling the truth or have their facts straight. You've done the same over on the Majestic 12 write-up, just regurgitating Klass, even though many of his objections are provably false. It's going to take some time to clean up the many factual errors in that article as presently written, while trying to present both sides. Dr Fil, 5 December 2005

This is nonsense. Green fireballs are quite common; the colour is caused by the ionisation of oxygen. Here is a link to a page which explains that, with a nice picture of green fireballs to boot. http://www.cloudbait.com/science/fireballs.html The colour of ionised oxygen is also visible in aurorae; I have seen it that context and it is neither blue-green nor lime green, but a middle range green, so could easily be observed as either. It looks to me as if this Dr LaPaz was mistaken in that respect. He was mistaken too if he accepted the estimates of height made by some of the witnesses; meteors and bolides are generally observed at heights of 20-40 kilometers, not a few thousand feet, although most observers think they are much closer and lower. So that makes Dr LaPaz's estimates of speed almost certainly inaccurate. eburacum

It is pretty clear that you again don't know what you're talking about. LaPaz wasn't using estimates of height or speed by witnesses. Where did you dream that up? LaPaz always triangulated such data from at least two different sets of witnesses, which is something completely different, because you get quantitative results, not estimates. It's a technique he had used for a very long time to determine trajectories of meteor fireballs, find the impact point, and then recover meteorites. He was considered one of the world's experts in doing this. Triangulation from witness accounts is still used in tracking down meteorites.

In the case of the huge green fireball of January 30, 1948, literally hundreds of witnesses were interviewed. Again LaPaz came up with anomously low altitude and speed, based on triangulated reconstruction of trajectory, not witness guesses. I don't think you know the difference.

As for the green color, the color of the green fireballs was lime-green, not blue- green from ionized oxygen. LaPaz knew all about occasional blue-green color being reported in meteors. He knew about blue-green auroras. LaPaz had been watching the skies and studying meteor reports for over 30 years. He said the color was completely unlike any other meteor he had ever observed or had ever been reported. LaPaz was a world-class astronomer and meteor expert, not some CSICOP skeptic who doesn't even have the basic facts straight.

More nonsense. Lime green is a subjective assessment of the colour, and auroral ionised oxygen often tends toward lime green shades. Examples here http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/Magnetosphere/aurora/images/aurora_1_hao_comet.jpg http://local.aaca.org/fairbanks/images/Aurora%20photo-green.jpg http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/spaceweather/lenticular/green_aurora.jpg http://www.abmedia.com/astro/aurora/aurora110904-12.jpg These images look mid-range green to yellow green to me, rather than blue green. In fact I have never seen a noticably blue-green aurora; that suggests to me that LaPaz was consciously or subconsciously biased in favour of anomaly in this case. Triangulation of meteor heights using witnesses is inaccurate to an order of magnitude or more unless you have instrumentation; luckily one 'green fireball' sighting at White Sands did involve triangulation using cinetheodolites. The height calculated was 150,000 feet (45 kilometers) which is entirely consistent with a meteor. eburacum


Color, speed and altitude weren't the only anomalous characteristics. Absence of sound was another.

Absence of sound in a meteor observation is not an anomaly, it is the expected situation. As meteors occur several tens of kilometers away from the observer any sound which might be noticed would be heard a number of minutes later. Just for your information, the question of sound in meteors has its own anomalous aspect; some observers report instantaneous sound, which is supposedly impossible. One theory is that radio waves from the meteor are received by equipment near the observer in certain circumstances, and heard as static white noise, But I digress. eburacum


Also flat trajectories and occasional observed course changes. Turning on and off like a light switch. Lack of a smoke trail. Confinement in geographical area, with a predilection towards sensitive areas like Los Alamos. Inability to ever find fragments, despite extensive searches, quite unlike the other meteor fireballs LaPaz had tracked and recovered meteorite fragments from. This had LaPaz convinced that the green fireballs were artificial, and he wasn't the only one. Dr. Mariarchi, the first head of Project Twinkle was convinced of it too. Dr Fil 18:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)


Argument from authority, and an authority with out of date information. Dr LaPaz was a pioneer in the study of meteors; but fifty years of additional data now show that green meteors are not unusual phenomena at all. eburacum

Here is a spectrographic analysis of a Perseid meteor made in 1999; http://amsmeteors.org/spectra/majdenobs.html the most interesting feature is the 'forbidden line' of O1 at 5577 Angstroms. This emmission line is smack bang in the middle of the green paert of the spectrum, ie not blue green at all. Dr LaPaz would not have known about this line in 1948-1950 as it was only discovered in 1958. eburacum

[edit] NPOV

NPOV added. Article is way out of balance. Bubba73 (talk), 14:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Infobox, NPOV, "Pseudoscience"

What is the basis for any of these other than personal biases? How do you define "pseudoscience"? LaPaz used standard scientific methods for tracking meteors that he had used successfully for 30 years. The guy was one of the world's experts in meteorites and astronomy. He was also an expert mathematician and top theoretician in special relativity. This is an obvious smear to try to paint him as a kook.

As the USAF Directorate of Intelligence noted upon the closing down of Project Twinkle, no satisfactory solution was ever offered:

"The Scientific Advisory Board Secretariat has suggested that this project not be declassified for a variety of reasons, chief among which is that no scientific explanation for any of the ‘fireballs’ and other phenomena was revealed by the (Project Twinkle) report and that some reputable scientists [note plural] still believe that the observed phenomena are man-made."

No satisfactory scientific explanation has been given since then (nonsensical debunking explanations don't count). LaPaz also wasn't alone in his "beliefs" of artificial origins. Remember the "scientistS" in the above quote? One of these was the first director of Project Twinkle, Dr. Anthony Mirarchi, who also agreed with LaPaz. He was so incensed at the public debunkery, that he went public in 1951 and almost got prosecuted for violating his security oath. See Bruce Maccabee's article on this. [3]

In addition, the director of Project Blue Book, Edward J. Ruppelt said that when he went to Los Alamos and spoke to the various scientistS there, almost all of whom had personally seen the green fireballs, they were almost unanimous in believing them NOT to have natural origins but were probably alien probes instead.

So I guess all these people were "pseudo-scientists" as well. Again, I ask on what basis do you label this "pseudoscience"?

Infobox preserved below pending discussion. Dr Fil 00:49, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


Disputed science:
Artificial green fireballs

Disciplines:
Core tenets:
  • Mysterious lights seen in 1948 were caused by artificial devices
Year proposed: * 1949

Original proponents:
  • Lincoln La Paz

Current proponents:
  • none known
  • Lack of falsifiable predictions does present a problem with the "artificial" theory. But this article is about the phenomenon and not the "study of strange green fireballs in the sky" ---J.Smith 22:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually it was fully falsifiable in principle. Among other things, had they been able to find fragments, they could probably have determined one way or another if the material was artificial or natural. Accordingly, LaPaz (who said he hoped they were natural) spent a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to locate fragments, using the same triangulation techniques in which he had a high rate of success in locating meteorite fragments following an ordinary fireball. They were never able to find anything, even though LaPaz, because he was working with military intelligence, had many more resources at his disposal than he usually did.
Falsification might also have been possible through collection of better data. One of the purposes of Project Twinkle was to gather such data by setting up a network of photographic and observation posts to hopefully film, accurately triangulate, and get such things as spectra. Twinkle was never properly funded or fully implemented, with only one or two posts in operation at any time, LaPaz's protests notwithstanding. This wasn't LaPaz's fault. Labeling him a "pseudoscientist" or his theory (supported by some other scientists involved) as "pseudoscience" is nothing but a cheap shot intended to denigrate LaPaz and the subject matter.
I should also like to point out that "falsifiability," while always desirable, is not a necessary part of the scientific method. Inability to falsify does not by itself make something "pseudoscience." If that were the case, many branches of accepted science would immediately become "pseudoscience" because they aren't testable. E.g., there is currently no way to falsify string theory because it has yet to make a testable prediction. Some old school particle physicists argue that this makes it a non-science or pseudoscience, yet most physicists probably feel that this is an extreme view. "Pseudoscience," like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.Dr Fil 16:57, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Restore NPOV tag

This article is a total disaster. Virtually the entire page is written from the "ooh arent these green flashes spooky and probably UFO's?!?" POV. there is no attempt at a balanced scientific viewpoint anywhere within. I will begin edits to modify the article shortly. --Deglr6328 06:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

My what an intelligent comment. You have made your personal prejudices abundantly clear. But this is supposed to be an encyclopedia article. Do you have anything actually, you know, 'factual' to contribute?
The history of the green fireballs and Project Twinkle is extremely well- documented from declassified government documents, including those from the Army, Air Force, and FBI. The histories in the "sources" and "external links" are all directly derived from these documents. Ruppelt, the director of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, devoted an entire chapter of his book on the subject.
Like most "disbelievers," you probably never bothered to read a single one of the already provided source histories and external links. If you had, you would know that the green fireballs were indeed of high concern to Army and Air Force intelligence because of their high concentration over sensitive atomic military installations like Los Alamos and Kirtland. They were indeed scientifically studied by La Paz and other scientists. There were indeed special scientific conferences called at Los Alamos and by the A.F. Scientific Advisory Board to discuss the phenomenon. There were indeed scientists besides La Paz who vehemently disagreed that they were a natural phenomenon and thought them artificial. Read Ruppelt where he discusses his visit with Los Alamos scientists and technicians, nearly all of whom had seen the green fireballs, who were virtually unanimous in their opinion they were extraterrestrial probes.
"ooh arent these green flashes spooky and probably UFO's?" No, the green fireballs weren't dreamed up by gullible UFO believers. This was stuff of great concern to military intelligence and various government scientists. It's all in the documents. Everybody agreed they were a real phenomenon of some kind. Too many intelligence officers and scientists had seem them with their own eyes. Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh had seen them (3 in fact). Later notorious UFO debunker Donald Menzel had seen one. He wrote a letter to the AF Scientific Advisory Board saying so and also admitting he was mystified. What he had seen was not a normal meteor fireball.
Try reading the already-provided references first before endlessly slapping demands for citations every other sentence. I'm playing along for now in the introduction. Highly specific page references are provided. But if you keep playing this pointless citation game, I'm going to start deleting them as totally unnecessary and redundant. Everything in the article is already in the references at the end.
And if you start inserting your mere skeptical opinion into the article claiming you are being more "scientific", you better be prepared to back up each of your statements with an actual scientific reference (not more unsupported opinion from some skeptical magazine you read). I can play the endless citation game too. But what results is an unreadable article cluttered with way too many distracting references. Dr Fil 00:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Reading the history of the article changes more carefully, I notice Deglr6328 did not slap the recent citation requests on the article. My apologies. My experience on other articles is the so-called "scientific skeptics" put up endless demands for citations on subjects they personally believe to be "pseudoscientific." No matter how many citations are provided, they demand more. They almost never bother to read the references already there at the end. They merely assume the material is all made up and never based on anything of substance. Be skeptical if you must, but please read the references first. The material in the article is 100% verifiable. The green fireball phenomenon was not made up by Ufologists. Everything about them comes from government documents or from public commentary of those directly involved. E.g., the subject was written up by LIFE magazine in April 1952. La Paz and Dr. Mariarchi, the first director of Project Twinkle set up to study them, also made statements in newspaper articles during the 1950s. Both disagreed that the green fireballs were natural. Dr Fil 01:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ball Lightning

I think it's either ball lightning or an asteroid contaning copper. -Realwheels, December 10, 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Realwheels (talk • contribs) 16:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Huh?

Ok, I don't really get why this topic is not an average meteor. Is green an abnormal colour in meteors? Also, Some of this isn't NPOV, like "as if that weren't enough".—The preceding unsigned comment was added by AstroHurricane001 (talk • contribs). 00:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Wording cited has been changed to "In addition." Intense, saturated, lime-green is an abnormal color in meteors, but there were numerous other reasons cited in the article and references why scientists like La Paz felt these weren't normal meteors: low speed, low, flat trajectory, changes of course, absence of sound, absence of smoke trail, absence of particles despite extensive searches, heavy concentration in one geographical area, etc. Dr Fil 18:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
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