The Secret History of the Moon

The Secret History of the Moon is a fifteen-minute animated documentary short released April 30, 2020 by filmmaker and musician John D. Boswell on his YouTube channel Melodysheep. Using evidence from rock samples the Apollo 11 mission brought back in 1969, the film lays out three competing hypotheses for how the Moon formed: a giant impact with a proto-planet called Theia, an internal radioactive explosion known as the georeactor hypothesis, and Earth briefly becoming a molten, doughnut-shaped mass called a synestia. It goes on to ask whether the Moon once held liquid water or life and how it has helped stabilize Earth's climate. Boswell wrote, produced, edited, scored and narrated the film with planetary scientist Sarah T. Stewart as narrator, and critics praised it as a stylish, speculative account of lunar science.