Green fireball UFOs and a close encounter with Edward Teller

Reconstruction of green fireball UFO sighting: artwork made with a mix of AI and other composited elements

We finally get to see the father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, talking about UAPs. This important snapshot of history, about green fireball UFOs in the skies over New Mexico, appeared in the fourth drop of files, in a transcript released by the Department of War.

If you were hoping for a direct tie between Teller and UFO phenomena, then this is the real deal… but maybe not quite what you might imagine if your frame of reference is Bob Lazar’s tale of how he got recruited into S4. In that story, Lazar says he was given the job to look into captured UAPs after a brush with the theoretical physicist. In this document, however, Teller takes on the role of UAP troubleshooter after a rash of sightings has one of the world’s top meteor experts scratching his head.

The result is a fascinating conversation, as recorded by the Atomic Energy Commission, held at a small conference at Los Alamos on February 16, 1949. 

Getting great minds together to talk about green fireball UFOs

At the centre of the meeting is Dr Lincoln LaPaz, who co-founded the Institute of Meteoritics just four years prior (with Klaus Keil). By 1949, Lincoln LaPaz had found himself fascinated by a series of incidents involving green fireballs. LaPaz refuses to say they are meteors. And, as an expert in this field, he would know.

How did LaPaz find himself talking about UFOs in a top-secret setting? LaPaz, a professor at Ohio State University, had recently taken leave to the Mexico Proving Ground — first as a research mathematician then as technical director, Operations Analysis Section, Second Air Force. There, he had an interest in ballistics (including the Japanese Fu-Go balloon bombs) and meteorites.  

Unfortunately, a recent spate of green fireball sightings has confounded his expertise in this area. Whereas he could usually find traces of meteorites, he’s unable to find remains of these elusive balls of yellow-green fire. They also don’t make much noise - perhaps some, but not what you’d expect from a meteor. Even more perplexingly, no animals seem to be startled by the fireballs. Likewise, if you expect a "train" or trail behind the object, as you do with meteors, you don’t get that with the green fireballs. Strangest of all is their trajectory. They don’t fall towards the ground; they fly horizontally.

They also seem to be occurring near atomic bomb installations. Those who follow the subject of UAPs will know the association between strange aerial phenomena and nuclear energy. See the huge catalogue of such sightings in the book UFOs and Nukes, by Robert Hastings.

Screenshot of the original transcript document front page: Credit, US Department of War

Who were the scientists assembled to help Lincoln LaPaz understand the green fireball UFOs?

• Edward Teller — He came to Los Alamos in 1943 as one of Oppenheimer’s senior theorists, but refused his assigned implosion work, already fixated on the “Super”; a fusion bomb; and was sidelined into resentful isolation. After the war, he lobbied for the hydrogen bomb against Oppenheimer’s opposition, a feud that would culminate in Teller’s 1954 testimony helping strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. In that fight’s early days, in February 1949, he finds himself here, in this meeting about green fireballs. 

• Dr. Joseph Kaplan — UCLA geophysicist and a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board.

• Dr. Erich Regener — a German atmospheric physicist and cosmic-ray pioneer, brought to the US after the war.

• Dr. Pruitt — the source of green fireball observations from the Hanford area.

Who else is attending the Los Alamos meeting about green fireballs?

The room also held Major Winn, Major Godsoe, and Capt. Melvin Neef (4th Army / 17th District OSI — Neef being the principal OSI agent on the case, and himself an eyewitness), Lt. Commander Richard Mandelkorn (AFSWP, the nuclear custody organisation), a "Mr. Maxwell" (FBI), and Sidney Newburger, Jr. and a "Mr. Morgan" (AEC security).

Lincoln LaPaz: a man with a theory

LaPaz comes into this meeting with a pet theory that these green fireball UFOs aren’t meteors, but something the military has been working on.

La Paz: The only explanation is the one I gave in the beginning and had my ears promptly boxed for. I think these are defensive maneuvers of some higher U.S. Command and they are practising in the neighborhood of the regions they are going to defend, so naturally your localization of light near the atomic bomb installations, but boy, am I scolded for that! [quote cleaned up for typos/speculative question marks]

Teller at first considers LaPaz’s reports as a given. He says “it certainly sounds like everything else but meteors. The thing that impresses me is your evidence of the horizontal flight. Meteors do not usually come in like that.”

At this point in the conversation, there is an interesting aside. Teller questions why flying disks and green fireballs have been put together as one category. The reason it’s worth bringing up is that the conversation point seemingly jumps out from nowhere. We can speculate, but there’s no hard reason why the question is being asked.

Dr. Teller: I have the feeling that it is …. either a discovery in physical psychology or …..

Dr. LaPaz: I thought that psychological element would come in here!

Dr. Teller: Here is a slightly irrelevant question — you brought in the flying discs. What is the connection?

Dr. LaPaz: I didn’t bring in the flying discs.

Mr. Newburger: I brought in the matter of the flying discs because the Air Force, as I understand, now have classed the flying discs and these fireballs into one category.

Teller argues that it is “generally known” that disks are meteorological balloons. We’ll come back to that remark later.

There are some other interesting asides in here. This includes when Newburger asks whether “the Germans [were] experimenting in any phase that was possibly connected with it?” LaPaz answers: “Well, they had the so-called stations in space… might have some attachment to it.” We are left to ask: what “stations in space” is he talking about? The danger with a lot of these snippets is that, despite it being a very thorough transcript, there is often a moment just before remarks that has not been captured by the note taker. Without tone or context, we could be listening through a figurative keyhole.

That said, one of these moments is particularly interesting, an interjection by Major Godsoe:

Major Godsoe: The basic purpose of this meeting is: we want you to find a meteor!

Is he joking? Frustrated that there is no answer? Right before that remark, LaPaz is passing around notes on a sighting. We’re without context, but taken at face value, we could say he’s trying to push for a certain conclusion from the assembled scientists. In other words: make sure you don’t conclude these green fireballs are alien spacecraft, or enemy technology. Come to the conclusion that they are meteors.

But if we choose to take this fairly literal interpretation, we have to consider it’s also very possible Teller thinks, or knows, that UFOs are weather balloons. In other words, he’s not covering for any secret military experiments LaPaz might be hinting at. Nor is he the sort of man who would recruit Bob Lazar.

We leave Teller puzzled at the end of the transcript. He spends 20 minutes at a blackboard, nonplussed. He says, “If I can just believe everything I have heard and put it together with what I theoretically believe in, it ought to be a material body — might be an electron phenomenon.” 

LaPaz replies, “You see why I’m puzzled, Dr. Teller. Nothing like this… has ever been observed in the case of meteorite drops.” Teller then reasons that if a good laboratory confirmed no sound was heard, any "material" object would be too small to have produced the blinding light. 

Bradbury counters that Teller “left out something in light effects — you don’t have to worry about kinetic energy. You can get your light from chemicals as well.” Then he adds, “Still don’t feel that the meteor stuff is out. The puzzling thing is the long horizontal path; also, absence of noise is puzzling.”

We’re left, even with insight from some of the smartest minds, unable to reach a conclusion about the mystery green fireball UFOs. In fact, LaPaz would never be fully satisfied that these were meteors. However, his next futile effort to get an answer — Project Twinkle — is a story for another time. 

Regardless, this transcript is yet another example of how military and top scientists have been talking about strange objects in our skies for some time. Don't ever think that glowing orbs, fireballs or any other type of UFO, for that matter, are a new point of fascination.