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Case · C-009

The “green fireballs” over New Mexico's nuclear laboratories

Los Alamos, Albuquerque (Kirtland and Sandia) and other locations in New Mexico · United States · Dec 5, 1948

In flight Mixed witness types

Disputed explanation

What happened
From December 5, 1948 and in the following months, scientists, military personnel, security agents and pilots reported green luminous globes, silent and with a nearly horizontal trajectory, over Los Alamos and the military installations of Albuquerque; according to the Los Alamos laboratory, similar reports also came from the vicinity of Hanford and Oak Ridge. On February 16, 1949, Los Alamos hosted a conference with Edward Teller, Norris Bradbury, LaPaz and representatives of the FBI, the Atomic Energy Commission and the armed forces, which saw no significant threat in the phenomenon but ruled out meteorites, auroras and weather balloons as explanations. The transcript was published in July 2026 in the fourth tranche of the Department of War's PURSUE archive.
Proposed explanation
Project Twinkle, the observation network that grew out of the conference, was never fully implemented, was closed after about two years, and the phenomenon was officially judged to be probably of natural origin. The meteoriticist Lincoln LaPaz maintained in 1949 that several episodes were not compatible with ordinary meteorite falls; in a 1950 analysis kept in the FBI case file he attributed most of the cases to unusual meteorites and a smaller part to possible U.S. missile tests. The skeptical analyst Mick West regards green bolides (bright meteors) as a plausible explanation, while judging the evidence inconclusive.
Official investigation
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission, FBI, U.S. Air Force (Project Grudge, Project Twinkle)

Official documents

  1. Los Alamos Conference on Aerial Phenomena, 1949 (DOE-UAP-D004) · Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory / Atomic Energy Commission (published by the Department of War, PURSUE 04) · Feb 16, 1949

Sources

  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory, The Vault – “FOIA requests at the National Security Research Center” (2024) (analysis)
  2. Newsweek – the 1949 documents on the Los Alamos green fireballs (July 2026) (press)
  3. Metabunk (Mick West) – “Green Fireballs – UFOs or Meteors?” (2024) (analysis, skeptical)

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