He accidentally discovered in the desert a monolith that had sprung up out of nowhere: it remembered a scene from an alien movie.

According to CNN, helicopters from Utah’s public safety office helped conservationists with colleagues in southeastern Utah count a population of snow rams last Wednesday when they spotted an object that appeared to have descended from the 2001 Space Odyssey.

“It was noticed by one of the biologists, we accidentally flew directly over it. He said: Hi, Hi, Hi, turn around, turn around! And I said: What? And he said, “There’s something there, we have to look at it,” said driver Brett Hutchings of the monolith’s history.

And indeed, in the middle of the red rock wasteland stood a glistening silver-colored monolith. The pilot claims that it is a triangular metallic monolith 3 to 3.5 m high that protrudes from the ground. Mr. Hutchings believes that the monolith did not actually fall from the sky, it appears that it was built by someone on purpose.

“We joked that if one of us suddenly disappeared, the rest would have to flee urgently,” Hutchings said.

And although the object looks like a structure from an extraterrestrial civilization, the pilot believes it was built there by some artist.

“I think there was a new wave artist here or, you know, a huge fan of the 2001 Space Odyssey,” the pilot said, recalling that a black monolith appeared out of nowhere in that 1968 movie.

However, such a building is illegal because it is prohibited to build any structure on state territories without special permission, “no matter what planet you come from,” the Utah Department of Public Safety said in a statement released Monday.

At present, the exact location of the monolith is not announced, it is not yet known who brought and built it there. It is decided whether further study will be necessary.