A helicopter crew of Utah’s Department of Public Safety lately spotted a large metal monolith in southeastern Utah’s rocky desert. No one is aware of what the metal object really is or how it ended up there.
Last Wednesday, while supporting the Division of Wildlife Resources in calculating the bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah, teammates of a helicopter crew from the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau discovered something out of the ordinary in the rocky desert below.
A smooth, sparkly metallic block standing upon the earth isn’t something you usually come across around those areas, so the crew thought to land and took a clearer look at it.
While it didn’t manage to do anything as a sci-fi movie, the mysterious metal block did result in many questions, most of which are still unanswered.
“One of the biologists … identified it, and we were surprisingly flying directly over the top of it,” pilot Bret Hutchings spoke to CNN affiliate KSL. “He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn back, turns back!’ And I was like, ‘What is it?’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this structure back there — we’ve got to go see it closely!’”
The team landed close to the monolith and investigated, with one member adding jokingly that if something were to happen to any of them, the other should try and escape from it.
The metal rectangle, which stood approximately between 10 and 12 feet (3 to 3.6 m) tall, failed to do anything special and seemed to consist of metal sheeting joined together by screws.
Whoever placed it there didn’t just drop it; they went to the work of cutting the cut rock base and plating the monolith in that spot.
“That has to be the strangest thing that I’ve witnessed out there in all my years of flying,” Hutchings said. “I’m guessing it’s some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a huge (‘2001: A Space Odyssey’) fan.”
The Department of Public Safety has agreed to keep the mysterious object’s location a secret for fear that science fiction fans would gather there and risk getting injured or get stranded during the journey. The area is remote and has less road access, making you curious about how the monolith was taken there. Aliens are out of the question, supposedly…
Despite efforts to maintain the monolith’s location, the internet has been hard at task attempting to pinpoint its exact location based on photos published by Utah authorities. According to multiple Reddit threads, a search location has been narrowed down already.
News of the mysterious monolith discovered in the remote Utah desert has happened to make international headlines. Still, if whoever is behind its placement comes forward or is found by authorities, they will suffer a hefty fine.
“It is illegal to place structures or art installation without receiving the permits and authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you come from,” the Utah Department of Public Safety released on its website.
