Most flying-saucer enthusiasts still refuse to believe that the green fireballs were natural phenomena. Misinterpreting or distorting the statements made by professional astronomers, they cite the unusual nature of these meteors as proof that they were not meteors at all but machines from another world. Advocates of this belief need more than a refresher course in logic; they also need to learn some facts about meteors.
The space-vehicle interpretation rests on a series of mistaken beliefs and illogical conclusions about the nature and behavior of meteors. These false premises may be summarized as follows:
1. Color. Meteors do not contain copper; since the peculiar shade of green shown by the green fireballs could come only from copper, the fireballs were not meteors but spacecraft.
2. Speed and trajectory. Meteors do not travel at a slow rate of speed and do not follow a horizontal path; since the green fireballs did both, they were not meteors but spacecraft.
3. Size and brilliance. Meteors do not show such great size or brilliance as did the green fireballs, which were therefore not meteors but spacecraft.
4. Sound. Meteors produce a loud noise; since the green fireballs moved silently, they were not meteors but spacecraft.
5. Fragments. Meteors deposit material fragments on the earth which can be located if the investigator maps the flight path and makes a search; since the green fireballs left no fragments, they were not meteors but spacecraft.
In the pages that follow we shall attempt to correct each of these mistaken ideas in turn, to present the actual facts known to astronomers, and to show clearly that the green fireballs were not spacecraft, but meteors.
Facts about Meteors
1. Color. Copper-green meteors are not a new phenomenon. This unusual shade of green is only one of the many possible colors that meteors may display—white, green, blue, yellow, orange, red, and all shades in between. Descriptions received by the Meteoritical Society include adjectives such as bright-green, copper-green, blue-green, fiery white, green-white, orange, blue, yellowish, silver, red-orange. Perceptions of color vary greatly among different observers, so that several witnesses may choose different words for the color of the same object. The most common adjective used is “brilliant”; an observer who has only a few seconds to look at the object often has real difficulty in deciding just what color accompanied the brilliance. Very common phrases are blue-green, greenish-white, orange-yellow, orange-red, greenish-yellow, yellow-green.