SOUTH AFRICA: Superbolt?

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A "nuclear"mystery deepens

When a two-pulse burst of light flashed in the atmosphere over the remote southern seas off South Africa on Sept. 22, a U.S. Vela reconnaissance satellite registered the intensity and transmitted the data back to earth. After a month of scrutiny, the U.S. Government surmised that the light may have been caused by a relatively low-yield nuclear explosion. Suspicion fell on South Africa, whose haughty denials did little to quell international fears that the Pretoria government had succeeded in developing a nuclear weapon.

However, noting that the burst of light was not followed by any detectable radiation, as presumably would have been the case after a nuclear detonation, scientists have since been asking whether the flash was not in fact the result of some freakish natural phenomenon. Could it have been caused by a falling meteorite?

Could the Vela satellite, in its electronic wisdom, have "imagined" it? The week's favorite theory was that the burst was really caused by a "superbolt" of lightning 100 times more intense than a normal bolt. Vela satellites have previously observed such phenomena, mainly over the sea and particularly in the vicinity of Japan. But in all previous known instances, a superbolt has emitted a single pulse of light, not two.

With an earthly mystery of such proportions on its hands, the White House called a two-day meeting to which it invited X-ray astronomers, satellite technologists and stratospheric physicists. The White House cautioned the world not to expect a quick answer. In the first place, it will take the scientists at least two or three weeks to reach some conclusions.

And as Adviser John Marcum observed, "We have a highly imaginative group here." In the meantime, State Department officials insist they are "95% sure" that some kind of nuclear explosion did occur.