A mysterious metal “obelisk” found buried in the remote western desert of the United States has inflamed the imagination of UFO watchers, conspiracy theorists and Stanley Kubrick fans around the world.

the bright triangular pillar, which juts out about 12 feet from the red rocks of southern Utah, was spotted last Wednesday by puzzled local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.
Landing to investigate, crew members from the Utah Department of Public Safety found “a metal monolith installed in the ground,” but “no obvious indication who might have put the monolith there.”
“It is illegal to install unauthorized structures or art on public land administered by the federal government, no matter what planet it is from,” the agency warned in a tongue-in-cheek news release Monday.

News of the discovery quickly went viral online, with many noting the object’s similarity to strange alien monoliths that trigger great strides in human progress in Kubrick’s sci-fi classic “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Others commented on its discovery during a turbulent year that has seen the world gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, optimistically speculating that it could serve an entirely different function.
“this is the ‘reset’ button for 2020. Can someone quickly press it?” joked one Instagram user.
“Close up it reads: ‘Covid vaccine inside’,” wrote another.
With officials refusing to reveal the object’s location for fear hordes of onlookers flocking to the remote wilderness, an online race has also begun to geolocate the “obelisk” using the surrounding rock formations.
Bret Hutchings, the pilot who flew over the obelisk, speculated that the obelisk had been planted by “some new wave artist.”
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.
On tuesday, a spokeswoman for his manager, David Zwirner, said it was not one of McCracken’s works, but possibly by a fellow artist paying tribute to him.
However, later that day, Zwirner made another statement suggesting that the piece was in fact McCracken’s, meaning that it had lain undiscovered in the desert for nearly a decade.
“the gallery is divided on this,” Zwirner said. “I think it’s definitely John’s.”
He added: “Who would have known that 2020 had another surprise in store for us. Just when we thought we’d seen it all. Let’s see it.
Either way, Hutchings admitted that it was “the strangest thing I’ve ever come across, in all my years of flying.”
“We were joking that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us will run away,” he told local news channel KSLtV.