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The bright triangular pillar, protruding about 12 feet from the red rocks of southern Utah, was discovered Nov. 18 by bewildered local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.
This video capture image obtained on November 24, 2020, courtesy of the Utah Aero Bureau Department of Public Safety shows a mysterious metal monolith that was discovered in Utah after public safety officials saw the object while conducting a routine mission. of wildlife. Image: AFP.
LOS ANGELES – A mysterious metal monolith found in the remote western United States desert, which sparked a national guessing game about how it got there, has apparently disappeared, authorities said.
The Utah Bureau of Land Management said Saturday it had received “credible reports” that the object had been removed “by an unknown party” on Friday night.
The office “did not remove the structure that is considered private property,” it said in a statement.
“We do not investigate crimes related to private property that are handled by the local sheriff’s office.”
The bright triangular pillar, protruding about 12 feet from the red rocks of southern Utah, was discovered Nov. 18 by bewildered local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.
* READ: Mysterious ‘obelisk’ in the US desert. Draw wild theories
After landing their helicopter to investigate, crew members from the Utah Department of Public Safety found “a metal monolith installed on the ground,” but “no obvious indication of who could have put the monolith there.”
2020 ‘RESET BUTTON’
News of the discovery quickly went viral, with many noting the object’s similarity to strange alien monoliths that unleashed huge strides in human progress in Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi movie. 2001: a space odyssey.
Others commented on its discovery during a turbulent year in which the world was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, optimistically speculating that it could serve a completely different function.
“This is the ‘reset’ button for 2020. Can anyone quickly press it?” joked an Instagram user.
“Someone took the time to use some kind of concrete cutting tool or something to really dig, almost to the exact shape of the object, and embed it really well,” Nick Street, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said. New York Times.
“It’s strange,” he added. “There are roads nearby, but transporting the materials to cut the rock and transport the metal, which is over 12 feet in sections, doing all of that in that remote location is definitely interesting.”
Some observers noted the object’s resemblance to the avant-garde work of John McCracken, an American artist who lived for a time in nearby New Mexico and died in 2011.
His son, Patrick McCracken, told the Times recently that his father had told him in 2002 that he would “like to leave his artwork in remote places to be discovered later”.
Although officials had refused to reveal the location of the object for fear that hordes of curious tourists would flock to the remote desert, some explorers had been able to track it down.
Instagram user David Surber said he walked to the monolith using coordinates posted on Reddit.
“Apparently the monolith is gone,” he later posted.
“Nature returned to its natural state, I guess. Something positive for people to come together in 2020.”
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