If you’ve been following the non-political news this last week, you know that members of the Utah Department of Public Safety, while counting Bighorn sheep, discovered a monolith in the Utah desert. It is, of course, an object strangely familiar to SF fans….

We also know from Google Earth images that it was placed between mid-2015 and 2016. All evidence clearly points to a metal item of decidedly terrestrial origins, but the actual people responsible have not stepped foreword, and the Utah DPS has warned against looking for the object. It’s easy to get lost in a desert, and they’re not exactly hospitable places. The monolith’s construction material, location, and one likely origin have all been identified by Reddit sleuths.

It’s worth noting that the area has long been used as a shooting location. Some of the more recent productions to use the site include John Carter (2012) and HBO’s Westworld.