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Public safety workers in southeastern Utah, who were helping to count sheep from a helicopter (dangerous if you fall asleep),  found something rather odd in the desert.

It’s all a little reminiscent of a famous scene in the iconic Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name.

Fun fact about Arthur C. Clarke – a number of David Bowie’s songs, including ‘Oh! You Pretty Things‘, ‘Starman‘ and ‘Five Years‘, are thought to be based on his novel, Childhood’s End.

Back to Utah, where, from above as the workers scoured the red-rock region, they spotted a metal monolith.

Here’s The Washington Post with the helicopter pilot, Bret Hutchings, who says that a fellow worker noticed the object, shouting “there’s this thing! There’s this thing back there! We got to go look at it!”.

“We were kind of joking around that if one of us just suddenly disappears, I guess the rest of us make a run for it,” Hutchings told KSL, chuckling.

It definitely looks like something out of science fiction:

The scene from 2001 that everyone is talking about:

They’re not sure who made it, but Hutchings says it’s the strangest discovery he’s made in years of flying over the Utah desert.

Installing unauthorised structures on state-owned public land is illegal, “no matter what planet you’re from”, says The Bureau of Land Management.

You can find a discussion around various theories of how it came to be there here.

The location of the monolith is being kept secret to stop 2001 fans from descending upon it while authorities conduct an investigation.

[source:washingtonpost]