The close approach of a comet sometimes causes a fantastic shower of “shooting stars,” and hundreds or even thousands may be counted in a single night. At the approach of the debris of Comet Biela on November 27, 1885, some 75,000 meteors were visible from a single place during a period of an hour. Irregularly occurring or sporadic meteors not associated with a known comet also occur and pelt the earth unexpectedly.
The Green Fireballs
On the evening of September 18, 1954, a group of astronomers and their wives from the observatory at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico, were having a picnic at the White Sands National Monument, near Alamogordo. In this great desert of pure white gypsum the air is extremely hot during the daytime but cools to a pleasant warmth after sunset. Supper finished, the picnickers had taken off shoes and stockings to wade in the soft warm sand. By 8:30 it was dark and some of the astronomers had already left but others (including Dr. Menzel) had lingered to watch the stars, which stand out sharply in the clear skies over the desert.
Suddenly, far to the north, appeared an enormous green fireball. Of blinding brilliance, it was moving slowly and majestically from east to west in a substantially horizontal path about seven degrees above the horizon, leaving behind a luminous trail that persisted for at least fifteen minutes. At about the same time thousands of other persons on the ground in New Mexico and Colorado, as well as the crews of several planes in flight, were observing the fireball. It passed over a crowded football stadium in Santa Fe, interfered with radio and TV transmission as it appeared over Albuquerque, and over Denver turned night into day. A United Airlines pilot at about 15,000 feet near Laramie, Wyoming, saw the blue-green ball crossing his course and for some ten minutes observed the luminous cloud it left behind[[V-6]]. At almost the same instant, the fireball was sighted in the Bay of San Francisco, 1000 miles away. One publication cited this meteor as two separate UFOs, one flying over San Francisco, the other over New Mexico and the Southwest[[V-2]].
When telephone calls swamped the newspaper offices, reporters interviewed Dr. Lincoln La Paz of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico. Although he had not observed this particular specimen, he had seen similar green fireballs a few years earlier and he commented that this was no ordinary meteor but something unusual. A new wave of UFO excitement began to sweep the country. Were mysterious machines from outer space again patrolling New Mexico?
The astronomers who had admired the fireball at White Sands were amazed at the public reaction. As professionals who had spent their lives in observing and analyzing astronomical phenomena, they agreed that the object had been unusual in its slow movement, its color, and its brilliance. But an unusual meteor is still only a meteor, not a spaceship, and they easily recognized it as a green fireball of the type that had appeared over the Southwest a few years earlier.
The first epidemic of green fireballs had begun in early December 1948, and for nearly two months the brilliantly burning objects had appeared almost every night in the skies over New Mexico[[V-7], p. 71]. Their apparent collision course startled plane crews in the air, and their steady, seemingly purposeful motion frightened observers on the ground. The fireballs showed a family resemblance in their bright-green color, their great size and brilliance, their level flight path, their noiseless disappearance, and their failure to leave material fragments on the ground.
New Mexico was a particularly sensitive area, studded with military bases and research installations carrying out vital work in ballistics, guided missiles, atomic energy, and space science in general. Since the unusual meteors seemed to be concentrating on New Mexico, Air Force Intelligence had to face the question: Were the fireballs natural astronomical phenomena or were they experimental guided missiles from another country, perhaps Russia?
After consulting Dr. La Paz and hearing his evaluation of the evidence, the Air Force felt growing concern. Perhaps unconsciously influenced by the general hysteria of the past year, Dr. La Paz concluded that the objects were not meteors but must be “something unusual” because they differed from “normal” meteors in their color, trajectory, velocity, size, brilliance, and apparent lack of fragments.
With very little knowledge of meteors and great faith in machines from outer space, saucer enthusiasts reasoned that since the fireballs were not normal meteors they must be artificial objects. Since they were artificial, they must be under intelligent control. Since they were intelligently controlled, they must be unmanned missiles or manned vehicles launched from an alien spaceship hovering hundreds of miles above the earth whose purpose might or might not be destructive, or they might be merely ranging devices sent as a warning to earthmen.