Word: menzel
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...only flying saucers which Menzel's theory does not explain are the green fireballs that have been reported with extraordinary frequency in the Southwest. But Menzel does not take them very seriously. In clear-aired New Mexico and Arizona, he says, meteors are seen oftener than in cloudier places. According to Menzel's colleague, Meteor Expert Fred Whipple, they often look green because of vaporized magnesium from their stony material...
...special kind of flying saucer, says Menzel, has been seen four times, just after the launching of a big "sky hook" balloon. They appear as roundish objects, apparently at a great height. He believes that they are caused by the balloon itself when it rises through a thin layer of warm air at a thousand feet or so (see diagram). As it rises, it punches a hole in the layer. Cold air flows in, forming a blob of denser air that acts as an imperfect lens. Observers on the ground see a small moving image of the balloon above...
...Fighters. Another saucerlike object is the "foo-fighter": a bright spot of light which seemed to chase night-flying airplanes during World War II. Menzel believes that foo-fighters are really light (from the moon, from a plane's exhaust or from some other source) that is turned into the pilot's eye by strong eddies of air near a damaged wing. The moon disks that he saw himself were probably a sort of foo-nghter...
After concluding that flying saucers are nothing but rare mirages, Menzel satisfied himself by mathematical analysis that air irregularities can cause them. But this theoretical treatment, he felt, was not enough. So he set about generating small-scale flying saucers in his basement laboratory...
...Then Menzel pointed a slender round beam of light from a projector at the underside of the invisible interface between the two liquids. Instead of passing through, the beam curved downward. When he looked directly into the downward slanting beam, he did not see a round spot of light. He saw an elliptical object, i.e., a perfect "flying saucer...