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Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah
The Utah Department of Public Safety has found a mysterious metal monolith in a remote corner of the state. The department's staff were conducting an aerial survey of bighorn sheep in the state's southeast, a region known as "red rock country" for reasons that should be obvious when you behold the image below depicting the …
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Someone with too much time & money ...
and once this "news" gains enough free traction, bounced from media to media around this globe (global economy, global junk), all shall be revealed, i.e. another breakthrough, revolutionary, disruptive, innovative, life-changing-experience-mind-boggling piece of garbage - in time for XMAS! CLICK! HERE! Physical or digital, garbage nevertheless.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 21:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Stainless steel, and very new
Someone posted that its been there for a while... per Google earth.
That said... aluminum would oxidize unless coated.
Tungsten or Tungsten Carbide wouldn't oxidize.
Of course... the truth... it was placed their by the lizard people... original inhabitants who evolved from the dinosaurs.
They have returned and have place this and others strategically around the world to help increase the earth's temperature. And you blamed man for global warming.
Puny humans!
Said anonymously due to the lizard people's kill squads roving the planet in disguise.
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Thursday 26th November 2020 13:06 GMT juice
Re: Stainless steel, and very new
There's a Facebook post being shared from someone[*] who claims to have driven out to the GPS coordinates to take a look.
And they've said it's clearly manmade, as there's bolts/welding/etc visible. As you can indeed see in one of the closeup photos they've taken.
They've also noted that it's a very long way away from anywhere, so nipping over to take a look isn't to be encouraged...
[*] Whit Richardson; he's posted multiple photos, as well as a link to someone else's YT video!
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 11:33 GMT Nick Ryan
I don't remember the dates, but while it's all to common to think of the North Americas being largely dominated by (largely) nomadic tribes, there were also quite a few cities (of the time) of good size and sophistication. The demise of most of these tends to be put down to environmental causes but some just disappeared almost overnight therefore probably violence was involved.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 09:25 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Re: Much ado about this...
> inside
There was a photo of one guy standing on another's shoulders so he could try to peer over the top. Since they'd spotted it from a helicopter, I should think that they would already have established whether it had an open top or not.
Given that there is apparently some water running from the rock crevice behind, and the rocks are clearly full of iron, I'm positing that this is a particularly highly-evolved species of cactus.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 09:55 GMT JetSetJim
Re: "...the Department won't reveal its location "
Given the photo in front of the article on El Reg is the same as the one found in Google Maps when you go to that location (courtesy of one Brian Buckner), one wonders if that is how it was found. He has another pic which certainly makes it look triangular.
I wonder what the licensing conditions are on that photo...
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Monday 30th November 2020 03:59 GMT jake
Re: "...the Department won't reveal its location "
It doesn't look any thing at all like a quarry.
This is a quarry ... Yes, that's Apple HQ less than 2 miles to the East.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 08:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Us humans and our narrow view of the science, it's clearly from an alien race whose composition is completely different and superior to ours in that they they shit metal monoliths or monologs as they are more commonly known. After viewing our television over the radio waves they determined we still throw shit at each other and decided to send a greeting. They are currently waiting with baited breath on the moon for our televised attempts at returning the message with catapults.
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Thursday 26th November 2020 01:03 GMT Dave559
Re: Slow to the punchline
'A "long game" indeed.'
I am genuinely wondering if it might be associated with the Long Now Foundation in some way?
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Thursday 26th November 2020 01:14 GMT Dave559
Re: Film set
Rocky arid alien landscapes are more often filmed in California desert locations within easy reach of Hollywood, for obvious logistical reasons.
There's a wonderful in-joke in a certain Star Trek series where (warning: very mild scene spoiler) a certain alien rock formation appears, but as its actual self. I may be slightly sad, but it did make me laugh!
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 12:23 GMT 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921
Judging by the form of the small symmetrical pool of water under the crack and the positioning of the object relative to both, it was placed there by a New Age/Yoga cult:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam
It's ratio of 1:9 (the rest is buried) suggests that this object is a place of worship for a New Age cult, not a Yoga cult; representing the Destroyer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva
As paraphrased by Oppenheimer: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Will 2020 never end?
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 16:56 GMT cd
It's not that far from Moab, which is scenic and popular, but also has a uranium industry background with discarded leftovers strewn about.
There were dumps of uranium ore along some riverbeds near there even recently, and there's a processing facility south of there near Blanding, to which radioactive tailings are being brought from out-of-state as well. A search will bring up various gov't maps of reclamation efforts and plans for that area.
I see the warning as straddling a way to keep people from exploring overland in potentially unsafe directions while not killing the golden tourism goose that is Moab.
That said, I'm tempted to go look. Could be there today if I stopped posting on the Reg, certainly lots of places to car-camp and hike. Might be a good time to set up a food truck nearby.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 17:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
The Monolith in Seattle was more exciting...it kept moving..
On January 1'st 2001 a large Black Monolith appeared in a Seattle park. Then disappeared again to reappear on an island in the middle of a lake in another park. Then a final sojourn by the lake until it went to its final resting place.
Back in the good old days when guerilla art was really creative and had a real sense of fun.
Anyone else remember the Ball and Chain on the Hammering Man outside the Seattle Art Museum? A far more honest art statement that the very anodyne original piece.
Was the "Waiting for the Interurban" wearing face-masks recently? Just checked. I see it did.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 20:55 GMT jake
Re: Let me get this straight...
"Also, who counts bighorn sheep?"
The Department of the Interior. Gives them the data needed to decide how many hunting permits are allowed in any given season. Remember, while this thing may be in the State of Utah, it's on BLM land, which is federally managed ... for rather small values of "managed", of course.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 21:19 GMT jake
Remote my ass.
I just looked at a map. It's only a couple hundred yards off the Lockhart Basin Trail, which is easily doable by an experienced off-roader in an almost bone-stock mid-'90s Ford Explorer equipped with adequate offroad tires, aftermarket skid plates, and a 3" lift. I suspect that an average, run-of-the-mill, home-built rock crawler can drive right up to it with no difficulty.
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Wednesday 25th November 2020 21:55 GMT Eclectic Man
Chocolate is the answer
It is the new Toblerone packaging, and full of (now melted) chocolate with bits of nougat, obviously.
Also, would educated people PLEASE stop calling it a 'monolith'. As has been pointed out by someone above, "lith" refers to stone and the object is obviously metallic.
(In the same way I am annoyed by people who think a 'henge' is a place with big stones and suchlike when it actually means an area within a ditch and dyke:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henge
"The word henge refers to a particular type of earthwork of the Neolithic period, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area of more than 20 m (66 ft) in diameter.")
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Thursday 26th November 2020 08:28 GMT Big_Boomer
MonoSid? MonoSider?
Lithos = Stone, Sideros = Iron, but we can't call it a MonoSider as it pretty obviously has 3 sides plus a top and (presumably) bottom. So, I dub it MonoSid as it stands alone and is made of iron. Since it seems to have appeared between 2015 & 2016 (from satellite images of the area) and isn't covered in crud and dust, someone must be visiting it regularly to clean it. From now on it'll be visited by hippies and cultists and QAnon loonies who will proclaim it to be the living embodiment of peace, god, and proof that you can get gullible morons to believe any old conspiracy twaddle.
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Thursday 26th November 2020 18:50 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: MonoSid? MonoSider?
Iron is Fe, so could it be a MonoFerrous?
Maybe it is not covered in crud and dust due to being quite pure, located in a desert with very low humidity, and a bit of wind to blow any sand off the top. There is an iron pillar in India which is hundreds of years old but has not rusted due to chemical composition, and a long way from the sea (so no salt to cause corrosion).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi
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Thursday 26th November 2020 00:13 GMT Stevie
Bah!
"The off-planet mention is of course a reference to seminal sci-fi flick 2001: A Space Odyssey, "
Is everyone in the world now so shirt thick they have to have every cultural reference explained in painful detail as soon as it is made?
Can't we leave this sort of stuff to the ritalin-deprived dweebs who edit pages on Wikipedia?
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Thursday 26th November 2020 19:46 GMT jake
Re: Bah!
Because today's kids don't realize that we've been listening to "their" memes since the 1960s (Star Trek, 2001, Dr. Who et alia) or 1970s (HHGTG etc.)? (1930s and 1940s for Hobbits and rings and dragons, oh my!)
But seriously kids, we know already. It's getting kinda old.
Now ger orf me lawn! (Have a beer, Stevie.)
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Saturday 28th November 2020 22:25 GMT jake
Re: Bah!
My lawn was figurative ...although. like a lot of my fellow travelers/explorers of our collectively owned federal (BLM) lands here Out West, I do have a sense of ownership. Not ownership as in "it's mine, and you cant have it!", but more of a custodial nature. I have been known to growl at idiots who tear up the landscape, leave camp fires burning, indiscriminately throw trash around, festoon the wilderness with graffiti, and the like. Somebody's got to stand up to the morons.
Places like Utah's canyon lands and deserts are unique on this planet, and IMO they shouldn't be ruined by a few asshole yahoos out for lulz. While I'm hardly green & granola (I legally hunt, fish, trap and selectively log), I do generally adhere to the principles of "leave no trace" in our wildlands. As such, while I would yell at the idiots who put up the "monument" in question (and wouldn't mind seeing them prosecuted by the Feds), I feel that leaving it in place for others to discover is probably the best thing to do.
And yes, if I ever travel the Lockhart Basin Trail again (it's been over 20 years), I will probably hike over to see the site in person, just because I can.
Strange multi-level not-quite-dichotomy, eh?
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Saturday 28th November 2020 23:48 GMT Stevie
Re: Bah!
Case in point. Every reference explained because someone thought everyone else was so shirt thick they needed help decoding the humor.
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Thursday 26th November 2020 06:36 GMT el_oscuro
There is another monolith
A few years ago in Arlington, VA, they were tearing down an old office building near my work and putting up a new one.
The problem was, when they dug down to about 40 feed, then encountered an unknown object they couldn't move. None of the equipment they had could move it. It was dubbed the Monolith. Eventually, they simply constructed the parking garage around it.
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Thursday 26th November 2020 07:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
It is where...
Rudi '4 seasons total landscaping, leaking hair dye' Giuliani will find all the missing millions of votes for 'The Donald'.
Or perhaps where that other dipstick of a lawyer (now fired) will find her 'biblical' pile of election corruption evidence (and the grave of Hugo Chavez)
The USA is a running joke in the rest of the world. The sad thing is that the MAGA crew can't see what they are doing to the reputation of the USA.
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Sunday 29th November 2020 17:26 GMT Ghostman
Re: Remote location
Remote location where one can get stuck even if they know the area, but somebody managed to get a big chunk of steel up there unnoticed and get back out without asking for help. Yeah, sounds legit.
UPDATE UTAH: The monolith has disappeared, seemingly overnight.
https://www.facebook.com/BLMUtah/posts/3816317375067234
Bureau of Land Management , the federal agency that oversees National Parks, says they did not remove the object.
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Thursday 26th November 2020 23:34 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
I drive all night
to get to
youthe monolithhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55071058
"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," said David Surber, a 33-year-old former US Army infantry officer who drove six hours through the night after finding a Reddit post claiming to have found the exact location.
State wildlife officials originally spotted the object on 18 November while conducting a helicopter flyover of the remote, Mars-like terrain to count big horn sheep. The Reddit user who posted the co-ordinates, Tim Slane, said he had tracked the flight path of the helicopter until it went off-radar - a sign it might have landed.
At this point, he scanned the map for the exact features of the terrain seen in official photos and videos, before zeroing in on a canyon that appeared to fit the bill. There, a distinct shadow - long and narrow - could be seen. It's not visible in historic satellite imagery from 2015, but appears in October 2016 when scrubland in the vicinity also appears to have been cleared.
I drove all night - Roy Orbison
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Friday 27th November 2020 07:39 GMT jake
Re: I drive all night
"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," said David Surber"
Sadly, our man on the spot Dave failed miserably in his quest to be "first", because a dozen other twits did the same thing. And they all failed, too, because clearly the Utah Department of Public Safety Aero Bureau and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources had already been there, which they all seemed to forget in their quest to find fame. To say nothing of the folks who put the thing up in the first place, who no doubt have been back a few times since.
During the meanwhile ... now, thanks to TehIntraWebTubes, a quiet little corner of Utah which hasn't seen more than a couple people per year (decade?) is getting trampled to death by a hoard of blithering idiots, each trying to get their page hits up.
Methinks that the authorities would do well to drill a small hole in the top of this thing and drop in a bore-scope, then post the results before some whacko treasure hunter off his meds heads that way with a Makita, drills out the pop-rivets down one side, and peels it like a banana ... thus depriving the rest of the public of a view of the pristine original.
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Friday 27th November 2020 14:34 GMT WONKY KLERKY
ref YOUR SURVEY
SIRS
I MUST, AND HERE DO, COMPLAIN IN THE VERY STRONGEST POSSIBLE.
ref Your Voting Option 2, viz:
'I don't know but I'm pretty sure it flipped a lot of votes from Trump to Biden'
IT ONLY LET ME VOTE x5 TIMES BEFORE IT LOCKED UP ON ME.
IS THIS ANYWAY TO RUN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY?
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Sunday 29th November 2020 17:45 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Calling all cars...
Mystery metal monolith vanishes from Utah desert
Metal structure that prompted multiple theories about how it came to be was removed by ‘an unknown party’, officials say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/29/monolith-vanishes-from-utah-desert
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Monday 30th November 2020 03:55 GMT jake
Re: Calling all cars...
Not really the end of the story. The thing was considered private property by the authorities ... and if whoever took it away didn't own it, it was theft. As a piece of world-renowned art, it probably had considerable value beyond just scrap ... the perps may be in for more trouble than one might think.
It gets worse for them. Apparently at least one person pissed next to it. If they managed to pollute that water source, it's a major federal crime. You can't run from DNA ...
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
