A mysterious monolith has been discovered in a remote area of the United States.
The body, estimated to be about 10-12 feet (3-3.6 meters) high and made of some sort of metal, was found planted in the ground, folded into a red rocky bay.
It was spotted in Utah by state wildlife officials who were helping count bighorn sheep from a Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) helicopter.
“This was the strangest thing I had encountered there in all my flying years,” pilot Brett Hutchings told local news channel KSL TV.
“A biologist was the one who discovered it and we just happened to fly right over it.
“It was like, Stand up, stand up, stand up, turn around, turn around!” And I said, “What?” And it’s like, “There’s this thing over there – we gotta look at it!”
He continued: “We were kind of joking about that. If one of us suddenly disappeared, the rest would run for it.”
“We were, like, thinking this is something that NASA hung up there or something. Are they wearing satellites about that or something?”
State officials monitored and inspected the structure. PIC: Utah Department of Public Safety
He said it looks man-made. He added, perhaps via a “new wave artist” or a “huge fan” of the 2001 science fiction movie A Space Odyssey, referring to a scene in the movie.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie, monkeys discover a lump of metal lining the desert.
The object’s similarity to the Monolith was noted in the 2001 movie: A Space Odyssey by state officials and social media users
DPS has posted pictures and screenshots of the discovery on its website, and a person filming one of the videos can be heard saying, “Intrepid explorers come down to explore what alien life looked like.”
They add laughing, “Who does this kind of thing? … it’s just brutal.”
After DPS shared photos of the structure on its social media channels, followers came up with their theories of their own.
Wildlife officials were counting big sheep from a helicopter when they saw the Monolith. PIC: Utah Department of Public Safety
One suggested that it was a “space gateway,” and another suggested that the object “might have left behind filming a movie.”
Others joked, “This is where the charger plugged in” and “I was wondering where I left that.”
DPS said in a statement that it would not disclose the exact location of the compacting platform for public safety reasons.
It added that installing structures without permission on public land managed by the federal government is illegal.
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