The Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) was an office at the Smithsonian Institution from 1968 to 1975[1] designed to assist Smithsonian scientists in studying unusual short-lived natural phenomena such as meteorite impacts, volcanic events, earthquakes, and unusual ecological events such as plagues, extinctions, fish rains, and the effects of oil spill events.
[2] CSLP published a series of scientific reports on unusual phenomena, as well as a 1972 paperback collection of unusual phenomena entitled Strange, Sudden, and Unexpected: True stories from the files of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Short-lived Phenomena (ISBN 0-590-09380-0), which covered topics including: CSLP restructured in 1975, with some activities moved to other portions of the Smithsonian to become the Scientific Event Alert Network, and eventually the Global Volcanism Program.
[4] Some of its activities and data were subsequently maintained and operated as an independent non-profit entity under the Center for Short-Lived Phenomena name.
CSLP was hired by Cahners Publishing Co. (since acquired by Reed-Elsevier) in 1977 to provide the pilot editorial content for the Oil Spill Intelligence Report newsletter.
The CSLP features as a plot point in Renata Adler's influential novel Speedboat.