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monolith
In a bizarrely 2001: A Space Odyssey-style twist, Utah officials found a huge metal monolith buried deep in the rock of a remote canyon, and absolutely nobody knows how it got there.
The monolith was found by the Utah Department of Public Safety while helping the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources count bighorn sheep that live in the surrounding canyons.
As the DPS explained in its caption:
"Counting big horn sheep with DWR this week. During the counts we came across this, in the middle of nowhere, buried deep in the rock."
"Inquiring minds want to know, what the heck is it? Anyone? 👽?"
That alien emoji seems like the only rational explanation, right?
The extraterrestrials are not only here, but they're aware of Stanley Kubrick's film canon and actively using it to troll us.
Actually, the Utah officials speculate it's probably just an art project of some kind.
But speaking to local news station KSLTV, helicopter pilot Bret Hutchings, one of the team of people who found the monolith, said that it definitely shocked him and his colleagues.
"One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it. He was like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!'"
"And I was like, 'what.' And he's like, 'There's this thing back there―we've got to go look at it!'"
Their initial thought was that it was perhaps a piece of NASA equipment.
But after a closer look they concluded it's probably some kind of art project by a Kubrick-loving artist.
"I'm assuming it's some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big [2001: A Space Odyssey] fan."
Kubrick's 1968 classic contains a scene where a giant black monolith of a similar shape to the one found in Utah appears in prehistoric times to a group of primitive ape-men, and then appears again to an astronaut in the year 2001.
Whatever the origins of the monolith, according to the team who found it, even the bighorn sheep they were tallying were like "Dude WTF?"
And on social media, people were definitely in agreement with the sheep.
Weirder still, eagle-eyed internet folks on 4chan discovered that the monolith has been there for at least five years, undiscovered.
Neither Utah nor Federal officials have indicated what they plan to do with the monolith.
Hopefully they'll leave it be—angry aliens is the last thing we need in 2020.