“At 5:29:45, everything happened at once. But it was too fast for the watchers to distinguish: no human eye can separate millionths of a second; no human brain can record such a fraction of time. No one, therefore, saw the actual first flash of cosmic fire. What they saw was its dazzling reflection on surrounding hills. It was, in the words of the observer from The New York Times:.”

“At 5:29:45, everything happened at once. But it was too fast for the watchers to distinguish: no human eye can separate millionths of a second; no human brain can record such a fraction of time. No one, therefore, saw the actual first flash of cosmic fire. What they saw was its dazzling reflection on surrounding hills. It was, in the words of the observer from The New York Times:.”

— Gordon Thomas