Photo: Instagram / David Surber
Earlier this week, a strange find in the red mountains of Utah gave hope to those looking for proof that aliens live among us or, at the very least, have visited us: a monolith slash triangle-shaped metal structure planted in the ground in a remote location.
The discovery was made by the Utah Department of Public Safety Aero Bureau (DPS) and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, out on a helicopter mission to count bighorn sheep in the area. The DPS made the announcement without disclosing the exact location of the structure, but fully embracing the alien joke.
Turns out there’s nothing otherworldly about it, and that’s because Internet sleuths have figured out the location – and have already been to the monolith. David Surber, a former U.S. Army infantry officer who lives in Utah and is big on hiking, was the first to find it, with help from a reddit user who figured out where the DPS helicopter landed by checking its trajectory and pinpointing where it went off the radar.
Surber tells the BBC he actually hoped the monolith was alien but that’s clearly not the case. The structure is made of three sheets of aluminum riveted together in a triangle shape, and firmly planted into the ground. It’s hollow and it’s missing the upper part and, apparently, it’s been there for almost five years. Google Earth imagery shows a dot and a shadow in the exact location, popping up sometime between August 2015 and October 2016 - another discovery made the reddit user who tracked down the exact coordinates.
“I decided to go there first because I was drawn to the fact that this object had been there for five years, hidden in nature,” Surber explains. The other draw was the possible alien origin, “yet deep down inside you know it was most likely just a very patient artist or Space Odyssey 2001 fan.”
Initial theories noted that this looked like the work of John McCracken, an artist who died in 2011. His estate half-confirmed them but they’ve since retracted the statement, so the only mystery left about this monolith is who put it there. The BBC notes that heavy machinery was used to drill holes into the rock bed to plant it, so this was definitely not a one-man crew type of job.
Because the location has been made public, Instagrammers are already flocking to the strange structure. Authorities say they can’t stop them because this is public land. But whoever put it there did break the law, since you can’t put art pieces on federal land. Not even if you’re an alien.
Turns out there’s nothing otherworldly about it, and that’s because Internet sleuths have figured out the location – and have already been to the monolith. David Surber, a former U.S. Army infantry officer who lives in Utah and is big on hiking, was the first to find it, with help from a reddit user who figured out where the DPS helicopter landed by checking its trajectory and pinpointing where it went off the radar.
Surber tells the BBC he actually hoped the monolith was alien but that’s clearly not the case. The structure is made of three sheets of aluminum riveted together in a triangle shape, and firmly planted into the ground. It’s hollow and it’s missing the upper part and, apparently, it’s been there for almost five years. Google Earth imagery shows a dot and a shadow in the exact location, popping up sometime between August 2015 and October 2016 - another discovery made the reddit user who tracked down the exact coordinates.
“I decided to go there first because I was drawn to the fact that this object had been there for five years, hidden in nature,” Surber explains. The other draw was the possible alien origin, “yet deep down inside you know it was most likely just a very patient artist or Space Odyssey 2001 fan.”
Initial theories noted that this looked like the work of John McCracken, an artist who died in 2011. His estate half-confirmed them but they’ve since retracted the statement, so the only mystery left about this monolith is who put it there. The BBC notes that heavy machinery was used to drill holes into the rock bed to plant it, so this was definitely not a one-man crew type of job.
Because the location has been made public, Instagrammers are already flocking to the strange structure. Authorities say they can’t stop them because this is public land. But whoever put it there did break the law, since you can’t put art pieces on federal land. Not even if you’re an alien.
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