Mysterious “obelisk” found in American desert sparks UFO theories

A mysterious metal “obelisk” that was found buried in the remote wilderness of the western United States has sparked the imagination of UFO watchers, conspiracy theorists and fans of British filmmaker Stanley Kubrick through the world.

The shiny triangular pillar, which protrudes about more than ten feet from the red rocks of southern Utah, was discovered last Wednesday by local officials.

Upon landing to investigate, crew members from the Utah Department of Public Safety found “a metal monolith set in the ground,” but “no clear indication of who might have put the monolith in it.”

“It is illegal to install structures or works of art without permission on federally administered public lands, regardless of the planet they come from,” the agency warned on Monday in a press release with a rebound.

News of the discovery quickly went viral on the internet, and many noted the object’s similarity to strange alien monoliths that sparked huge strides in human progress in classic sci-fi works like the famous Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey” from 1968.

Others have commented on the discovery in a turbulent year in which the world has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, optimistically speculating that it could perform an entirely different function.

“It’s the ‘reset’ button for 2020. Can someone quickly press it?” one user of the Instagram social network joked.

With officials refusing to reveal the location of the object for fear of hordes of onlookers approaching the remote desert, an online race also began to geotag the “obelisk” using the surrounding rock formations.

Bret Hutchings, the pilot who flew over the obelisk, speculated that the object had been planted by “a new trending artist.”

Some observers have noted the object’s resemblance to the avant-garde work of John McCracken, an American artist who lived for some time in neighboring New Mexico and died in 2011.