y the evidence that said they
weren't.

During the kidney-jolting trip down the valley from Los Alamos to
Albuquerque in one of the CARCO Airlines' Bonanzas, I decided that
I'd stay over an extra day and talk to Dr. La Paz.

He knew every detail there was to know about the green fireballs. He
confirmed my findings, that the genuine green fireballs were no
longer being seen. He said that he'd received hundreds of reports,
especially after he'd written several articles about the mysterious
fireballs, but that all of the reported objects were just greenish-
colored, common, everyday meteors.

Dr. La Paz said that some people, including Dr. Joseph Kaplan and
Dr. Edward Teller, thought that the green fireballs were natural
meteors. He didn't think so, however, for several reasons. First the
color was so much different. To illustrate his point, Dr. La Paz
opened his desk drawer and took out a well-worn chart of the color
spectrum. He checked off two shades of green; one a pale, almost
yellowish green and the other a much more distinct vivid green. He
pointed to the bright green and told me that this was the color of
the green fireballs. He'd taken this chart with him when he went out
to talk to people who had seen the green fireballs and everyone had
picked this one color. The pale green, he explained, was the color
reported in the cases of documented green meteors.

Then there were other points of dissimilarity between a meteor and
the green fireballs. The trajectory of the fireballs was too flat.
Dr. La Paz explained that a meteor doesn't necessarily have to arch
down across the sky, its trajectory can appear to be flat, but not as
flat as that of the green fireballs. Then there was the size. Almost
always such descriptive words as "terrifying," "as big as the moon,"
and "blinding" had been used to describe the fireballs. Meteors just
aren't this big and bright.

No--Dr. La Paz didn't think that they were meteors.

Dr. La Paz didn't believe that they were meteorites either.

A meteorite is accompanied by sound and shock waves that break
windows and stampede cattle. Yet in every case of a green fireball
sighting the observers reported that they did not hear any sound.

But the biggest mystery of all was the fact that no particles of a
green fireball had ever been found. If they were meteorites, Dr. La
Paz was positive that he would have found one. He'd missed very few
times in the cases of known meteorites. He pull