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Green fireballs are a type of unidentified flying object which have been sighted in the sky since the late 1940s.〔Page 47, Ruppelt Edward, J. (1956) Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, DoubleDay〕 Early sightings primarily occurred in the southwestern United States, particularly in New Mexico.〔〔〔 They were once of notable concern to the US government because they were often clustered around sensitive research and military installations, such as Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratory, then Sandia base.〔〔〔 Meteor expert Dr. Lincoln LaPaz headed much of the investigation into the fireballs on behalf of the military. LaPaz's conclusion was that the objects displayed too many anomalous characteristics to be a type of meteor and instead were artificial, perhaps secret Russian spy devices. The green fireballs were seen by many people of high repute including LaPaz, distinguished Los Alamos scientists, Kirtland AFB intelligence officers and Air Command Defense personnel.〔Page 50, Ruppelt Edward, J. (1956) Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, DoubleDay〕 A February 1949 Los Alamos conference attended by aforementioned sighters, Project Sign, world-renowned upper atmosphere physicist Dr. Joseph Kaplan, H-bomb scientist Dr. Edward Teller, other scientists and military brass concluded, though far from unanimously, that green fireballs were natural phenomena. To the conference attendees, though the green fire ball source was unknown, their existence was unquestioned.〔Pages 50-51, Ruppelt Edward, J. (1956) Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, DoubleDay〕 Secret conferences were convened at Los Alamos to study the phenomenon and in Washington by the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.〔〔〔〔(Transcript ) of Los Alamos conference〕 In December 1949 Project Twinkle, a network of green fireball observation and photographic stations, was established but never fully implemented. It was discontinued two years later, with the official conclusion that the phenomenon was probably natural in origin.〔Ruppelt, 78–79, 81; Clark 1998, 263; Maccabee, 149–161; (), ()〕 Green fireballs have been given natural, man-made, and extraterrestrial origins and have become associated with both the Cold War and ufology.〔Ruppelt Edward, J. (1956) "(report on unidentified flying objects )", DoubleDay〕〔Jerome, Clark (1998) "The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial", Visible Ink Press〕〔Maccabee, Bruce (2000) "The UFO-FBI Connection", Llewellyn Publications〕 Because of the extensive government paper trail on the phenomenon, many ufologists consider the green fireballs to be among the best documented examples of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). ==Early green fireballs== Some early reports came from late November 1948,〔 but were at first dismissed as military green flares. Then on the night of December 5, 1948, two separate plane crews, one military (Air Force C-47, Captain Goede, 9:27 p.m., east of Albuquerque) and one civilian (DC-3, Pioneer Flight 63, 9:35 p.m., east of Las Vegas, New Mexico), each asserted that they had seen a "green ball of fire"; the C-47 crew had seen an identical object 22 minutes before near Las Vegas.〔Page 48, Ruppelt Edward, J. (1956) Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, DoubleDay〕 The military crew described the light as like a huge green meteor except it arched upwards and then flat instead of downwards〔 The civilian crew described the light as having a trajectory too low and flat for a meteor, at first abreast and ahead of them but then appearing to come straight at them on a collision course, forcing the pilot to swerve the plane at which time the object appeared full moon size.〔Pages 47-48, Ruppelt Edward, J. (1956) Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, DoubleDay〕 Two AFOSI investigators — both of whom were experienced pilots themselves — witnessed a green fireball while flying an aircraft the evening of December 8. They said it was about above their craft, roughly resembling the green flares commonly used by the Air Force, though "much more intense" and apparently "considerably brighter." The light seemed to burst into full brilliance almost instantaneously. Their report stated that the light was "definitely larger and more brilliant than a shooting star, meteor or flare." The light lasted only a few seconds, moving "almost flat and parallel to the earth". The light's "trajectory then dropped off rapidly" leaving "a trail of fragments reddish orange in color" which then fell towards the ground. The next day, AFOSI consulted Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, an astronomer from the University of New Mexico. LaPaz himself saw a "green fireball" on December 12, which was also seen at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, enabling LaPaz to determine the trajectory using triangulation. From this LaPaz discovered that the center of the trajectory was straight over Los Alamos. In a classified letter to the Air Force on December 20, LaPaz wrote that the object moved far too slowly to have been a meteor and left no "trail of sparks or dust cloud" as would be typical of meteors flying at low altitudes. On January 13, 1949, the following message was sent to the Director of Army Intelligence from Fourth Army Headquarters in Texas: "Agencies in New Mexico are greatly concerned . . .Some foreign power (be ) making 'sensing shots' with some super-stratosphere device designed to be self-disintegrating . . . The phenomena (be ) the result of radiological warfare experiments by a foreign power . . . the rays may be lethal or might be . . . the cause of the plane crashes that have occurred recently . . . These incidents are of such great importance, especially as they are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive installations, that a scientific board () be sent . . . to study the situation." On January 30 the brightest and most widely seen green fireball sighting occurred near Roswell, New Mexico. The next day, the FBI was informed by Army and Air Force intelligence that flying saucers and the fireballs were classified top secret. LaPaz interviewed hundreds of witnesses, with help from the FBI and military intelligence, and again tried to recover fragments by triangulating a trajectory, but was again unsuccessful. After his own sighting and interviewing numerous witnesses, LaPaz had concluded that "green fireballs" were an artificial phenomenon. On February 8 he met with Dr. Joseph Kaplan, a UCLA geophysicist and member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. LaPaz's informal scientific study for the Air Force quickly became formal, being called the "Conference on Aerial Phenomena", convening at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in mid-February to review the data. The scientists felt that a network of instrument stations should be established to photograph and analyze the fireballs. By April 1949 similar sights were reported over a nuclear-weapons storage facility at Fort Hood in Texas. The intrusions were deemed so serious that, unlike the Air Force, the Army quickly set up an observation network. On July 24 a green fireball was observed falling close to Socorro, New Mexico. Dust samples were collected at the School of Mines there and were found to contain large particles of copper. LaPaz found this highly significant, since copper burns with the same yellow-green color characteristic of the green fireballs. He also noted that if the copper particles came from the green fireballs, then they could not be conventional meteorites, since copper was never found in dust of meteoric origin. LaPaz suggested that further air and ground samples be taken in areas where the fireballs were seen. Another Los Alamos conference convened on October 14. Among the puzzles were the sudden onset and the high concentration of sightings in New Mexico, quite unlike natural phenomena. Despite this, it was decided the fireballs were probably atmospheric in origin. Instrumented observations—photographic, triangulation, and spectroscopic—were deemed essential to solving the mystery. On November 3 Dr. Kaplan brought the plan to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board at the Pentagon. Kaplan by this time had decided the fireballs might be a new type of rare meteor. Nonetheless, most of the scientists remained puzzled by the brightness, trajectories, and absence of sound. Seeming to contradict his meteor hypothesis, Kaplan also said, "This high selectivity of direction seems to indicate that some group was trying to pinpoint Los Alamos with a new sort of weapon." Concerns were expressed about the possibility of panic and the need for continued secrecy. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Green fireballs」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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