[music playing]
NARRATOR: The
surface of the moon
is scarred with
tens of thousands
of impact craters
of various sizes.
Scientists suggest
this is due to the fact
that there has never
been an atmosphere
on the moon to help protect
it from bombardment by space
debris.
There are no natural erosive
forces, like wind or flowing
water, to affect its surface.
And there is little geologic
activity to conceal damage done
throughout the moon's history.
PAUL DAVIES: When you study
the distribution of craters,
you find the surface
is totally saturated.
That is, that there are craters
within craters within craters,
right down to the
smallest scale of size.
MIKE BARA: One of the things
that's really interesting
about lunar craters is that,
even though some of them
are very large and some
of them are very small,
they all seem to
have the same depth.
And that really shouldn't
happen on a planetary body.
There should be
variation in depth.
So why are the moon's
craters so uniform?
It's really, really
unusual, and it's really not
explainable in terms
of conventional
or established geophysics.
Some of the
craters on the moon
are nowhere near similar to
what they should look like.
In fact, they are
incredibly wide craters.
And wherever the
impact point is,
they're convex,
which means there's
still the bulge of the moon.
So this doesn't make any sense.
It's likely that there is
something under the lunar
surface which is very resilient,
and which is preventing craters
going any deeper than they do.
This could only really be
either much harder rock, which
it can't be because of
the mass of the moon,
or, alternatively,
a metal sphere
of some kind which is
preventing more damage.
[music playing]
NARRATOR: Does the uniform
depth of the craters on the moon
suggest some sort
of metallic barrier
underneath moon rock and dust?
But if so, why
wouldn't mainstream
scientists acknowledge this?
Ancient astronaut theorists
suggest that, by doing so,
they might also
have to acknowledge
that the moon may be hollow.
MAN: (ON RADIO) Yankee
Clipper, Houston.
NARRATOR: November 20th, 1969.
During their ascent back
to the command module,
Commander Charles Conrad Jr.
and lunar module pilot Alan Bean
release the Apollo
12 launch vehicle
and crash it back to the moon.
MAN 1: (ON RADIO)
Apollo 12, Houston.
The LM is on its way down.
MAN 2: (ON RADIO) Roger.
NARRATOR: Upon impact, something
very unexpected happened.
The moon was said
to have seismically
reverberated like a bell
for more than an hour.
WALTER CUNNINGHAM: With Apollo
12, people referred to a crash.
It wasn't really a crash.
It was an aimed deorbit
of the rocket used
to lift off the lunar module.
And the crew separated
the launch vehicle
and crashed it back
into the ground
right close to where they had
had a seismograph that they
had installed down there.
Well, it vibrated.
So it was kind of an
early clue as to how solid
was the surface of the moon.
What was amazing
about this is that,
suddenly, the moon began
to ring like a bell,
and did so for nearly an hour.
Dr. Wernher von Braun, who
was then the head of NASA,
decided that, for
Apollo 13, they
were going to
intentionally crash
a heavier portion of the
rocket into the lunar surface.
And when they did this,
the moon ran like a gong
this time, for over three
hours and to a depth
of over 20 miles.
ALAN BUTLER: This
was not expected,
and it still puzzles a
lot of scientists today.
The inference is that the moon
must be hollow because the moon
is made predominantly,
on the surface, of a kind
of rock called basalts.
Although it's a very
lightweight rock,
it also absorbs
impact extremely well.
And so if the whole of the moon
was made of that kind of rock,
you wouldn't expect
it to reverberate
when a large impact took place.
The reason that
this is played down
is because the idea of
the moon being hollow just
contradicts what we
know about physics.
