Controversy Over the Moon: Are the Craters Formed by Volcanoes or Impacts

This fantastic discussion from 1971 arose from a major controversy in the lunar sciences regarding our understanding of the moon’s surface craters (and by implication, the moon’s origin). Dr. Jack Green presents the arguments for volcanic origins and Dr. Eugene Shoemaker presents the arguments for impact origins. In no way is this video exhaustive but it does serve as a good primer on the controversy that existed at that time. Since 1971, the impact origins for the lunar craters, as advocated for by Eugene Shoemaker, has come to be the consensus scientific viewpoint as of 2022. However, in 2007-08, I was able to have several private conversations with Dr. Jack Green on his views of the lunar surface and asked if he still felt the same as he did in 1971. Indeed, Jack Green still held that his hypothesis regarding the lunar surface being volcanic in origin had never been properly addressed and that impact hypothesis tunnel-vision had caused his observations and opinions to be ignored without s