Mystery object in Utah desert sparks wild theories

AFP

A mysterious “metal monolith” found buried in the remote western United States desert has inflamed the imaginations of UFO spotters, conspiracy theorists and Stanley Kubrick fans around the world.

The shiny, triangular pillar — which protrudes approximately 3.5 meters from the red rocks of southern Utah — was spotted last Wednesday by baffled local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.

After landing their helicopter to investigate, Utah Department of Public Safety crew members found “a metal monolith installed in the ground” but “no obvious indication of who might have put the monolith there.”

“It is illegal to install structures or art without authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you’re from,” warned the agency in a tongue-in-cheek press release on Monday.

News of the discovery quickly went viral online. Many noted the object’s similarity with the strange alien monoliths that trigger huge leaps in human progress in Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Others remarked on its discovery during a turbulent year that has seen the world gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, and optimistically speculated it could have a different function entirely.

“This is the ‘reset’ button for 2020,” joked one user on Instagram.

“Can someone please press it quickly?”

Another user wrote: “Up close it reads: ‘COVID vaccine inside.’”

Although officials have refused to disclose the object’s location, a Reddit user said they had managed to geo-locate it using surrounding rock formations.

Bret Hutchings, the pilot who happened to fly over the object, speculated that it had been planted by “some new wave artist.”

Hutchings said it was “about the strangest thing I’ve come across out there, in all my years of flying.”

“We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it.”