Speaker 1: It was a cool, clear sunny day on November eighteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, as a small group of biologists from the
Speaker 1: Utah Division of Wildlife Resources boarded the helicopter. As they
Speaker 1: rose up into the sky, the vast red rock desert
Speaker 1: terrain of southeastern Utah spread out beneath them, looking for
Speaker 1: all the world, like the surface of Mars. The biologists
Speaker 1: were doing a survey of bighorn sheep that were dispersed
Speaker 1: throughout the expansive landscape. The team asked the pilot to
Speaker 1: fly to a particularly remote part of the region which
Speaker 1: they had yet to survey. The group were flying low
Speaker 1: over a narrow canyon when one of the biologists suddenly
Speaker 1: shouted out to the pilot to turn the around. What
Speaker 1: is it, said the pilot. The biologist wasn't sure, saying
Speaker 1: only that he'd seen something strange and that they should investigate.
Speaker 1: The pilot pulled back on the cyclic and turned the
Speaker 1: chopper around. As they banked and swooped down back over
Speaker 1: the canyon. The others finally saw it too. What the
Speaker 1: hell is that, someone muttered. It was inexplicable, a smooth,
Speaker 1: metallic slab standing upright about three meters high appeared to
Speaker 1: be embedded deeply into the red rock of the canyon floor.
Speaker 1: On closer inspection, the object was revealed to be made
Speaker 1: of metal sheets riveted into a triangular prism. Helicopter pilot
Speaker 1: Brett Hutchings said that while the object appeared to be
Speaker 1: human made, it had to have been deliberately placed on
Speaker 1: the ground rather than the sky. He said, we were
Speaker 1: kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears,
Speaker 1: then the rest of us make a run for it.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Utah's Department of Public Safety announced the
Speaker 1: unusual find on social media, along with a video and
Speaker 1: photographs of the object, alongside a jaunty alien emoji. They
Speaker 1: told the press they were bafforders to how and why
Speaker 1: someone would put such an object there, and that its
Speaker 1: placement on public land was unlawful. They also withheld the
Speaker 1: exact location to prevent people from endangering themselves while trying
Speaker 1: to find it. However, when the news went viral soon after,
Speaker 1: within hours read it user Tim Slain had identified the
Speaker 1: object on Google Earth by comparing the flight path of
Speaker 1: the State biologists helicopter against the red and white sandstone
Speaker 1: terrain from the videos. Google Earth Satellite images showed that
Speaker 1: the monolith had been installed sometime after August twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: but before October twenty sixteen, around which time scrub vegetation
Speaker 1: surrounding the site had been cleared. In other words, the
Speaker 1: monolith had gone unnoticed for four years. You're listening to Unexplained,
Speaker 1: and I'm Richard mclin smith. The Utah monolith was in
Speaker 1: a red sandstone slot canyon in San Juan County, in
Speaker 1: an area known as Lockhart Basin, part of the Bears
Speaker 1: Ears National Monument, a remote park with no public services, parking, restrooms,
Speaker 1: or cell phone service. To put it mildly, the spot
Speaker 1: was difficult to reach, requiring a drive along a dirt
Speaker 1: road followed by a considerable hike. Utah's Division of Wildlife
Speaker 1: Services were mystified in the days following the identification of
Speaker 1: the object's exact location. Despite Utah's Department of Public Safety's
Speaker 1: best efforts, members of the public soon started making their
Speaker 1: way to the strange pillar. Each side was just over
Speaker 1: half a meter wide. It was triangular, not magnetic, seemingly hollow,
Speaker 1: and appeared to be made of stainless steel or aluminium,
Speaker 1: all joined together with rivets The bedrock appeared to have
Speaker 1: been sworn to accommodate the base, which was then stuck
Speaker 1: down with some kind of silicon adhesive. Its precise age
Speaker 1: was hard to tell, though it was definitely human mate
Speaker 1: For men Ny, it looked like an alien artifact, reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the monoliths from Arthur se Clerk's Space Odyssey series,
Speaker 1: as iconically depicted by Stanley Kubrick in his classic film
Speaker 1: adaptation two thousand one as Space Odyssey. In the story,
Speaker 1: they appear periodically at key points in human evolution, deposited
Speaker 1: by aliens to guide human beings from one stage of
Speaker 1: technological development to the next. Journalists reporting the story waxed
Speaker 1: lyrical about the puzzling plinth. They variously described it as
Speaker 1: a mysterious artifact, maybe from aliens, discovered out of nowhere
Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert during the collective misery
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic. Monolith grkas as they became known,
Speaker 1: started arriving in droves, in cars, on motorbikes, some even
Speaker 1: coming by plane, but some of the locals in that
Speaker 1: remote corner of southeastern Utah were not so pleased with
Speaker 1: it all. One evening, nine days after the object's discovery.
Speaker 1: As the skies darkened and cool descended over the desert,
Speaker 1: four men closed in on the monolith, equipped with head torches,
Speaker 1: portable saws, ropes, and stretchers typically used for desert rescues.
Speaker 1: The men were on a mission. One of the party
Speaker 1: climbed up onto the shiny metal plint, then shone his
Speaker 1: torch up into the night sky as another team member
Speaker 1: took a photo. It would be the last shot of
Speaker 1: the monolith standing. Base jumper Andy Lewis, along with adventure
Speaker 1: guide Sylvan Christensen and two others, filmed themselves as they
Speaker 1: began dismantling the metal installation, pulled out the rivets, then
Speaker 1: put the separate panels on the stretchers and hauled them away. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the now disassembled monolith was handed over to Utah's Bureau
Speaker 1: of Land Management, who put the pieces into storage. The
Speaker 1: monolith has not been seen in public since. But then
Speaker 1: more metal columns just like it began to appear everywhere.
Speaker 1: The first showed up outside the Romanian city of Piatra
Speaker 1: Nampt on November twenty seventh, then disappeared a week later.
Speaker 1: Another was spotted on top of Pine Mountain in a Tascadero, California,
Speaker 1: also on December two. A fourth slap appeared in Albuquerque,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, on December seventh, but was taken down the
Speaker 1: same day. Over the next few weeks, more and more
Speaker 1: similar objects appeared in countries across the globe, in locations
Speaker 1: as far apart as Europe, South America, and Australia. To date,
Speaker 1: over two hundred similar metal columns have been reported from
Speaker 1: various locations around the world. Many of the new monoliths
Speaker 1: were seemingly built by local artists, imitating the Utah installation,
Speaker 1: but the mystery of who made the original remained. Speculation
Speaker 1: was rife as to who might have done it, and
Speaker 1: there was one prime candidate, an eccentric artist who lived
Speaker 1: for many years in the desert country of New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Minimalist sculptor John McCracken was born in Berkeley, California, the
Speaker 1: son of ranchers Tall and Rangy. With a weather beaten face,
Speaker 1: McCracken had eyes, wrote one journalist that appeared to have
Speaker 1: stared too long at the sun. The artist was a
Speaker 1: keen reader of science fiction. McCracken was also friends with
Speaker 1: Leonard Nimoy, who played the pointy eared vulcan hero Spock
Speaker 1: in the original Star Trek TV series and films, who
Speaker 1: collected his work. McCracken believed fervently in time travel and
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial life, including the theory that advanced alien races had
Speaker 1: been visiting Earth for a very long time and were
Speaker 1: committed to helping humanity evolve. Who was a precedent for
Speaker 1: the Utah Object In McCracken's work, he'd made a metallic
Speaker 1: monolith nearly identical to the Desert mystery piece, now in
Speaker 1: the possession of gallery owner david's Werner and on display
Speaker 1: in New York City. There was just one slight problem
Speaker 1: with McCracken being responsible for the Utah Monolith. The artist
Speaker 1: died in twenty eleven from a brain tumor at the
Speaker 1: age of seventy six, a good four or five years
Speaker 1: before the object appeared. When John McCracken's son Patrick heard
Speaker 1: the news about the Utah Monolith, he got chills. It
Speaker 1: reminded him of a conversation he'd had when he'd visited
Speaker 1: his father back in two thousand and two. At that time,
Speaker 1: the artist was living in Meada, Nalis, New Mexico in
Speaker 1: a small Adobe house overlooking a mesa. As father and
Speaker 1: son stood outside gazing up at the night sky, John
Speaker 1: said he'd like to leave his artwork in remote places
Speaker 1: to be discovered later. He wasn't your average sort of dad,
Speaker 1: Patrick recalled, going on to say that he didn't think
Speaker 1: his dad was joking, and that the monolith's installation in
Speaker 1: Utah was very much something his father would do. Quite
Speaker 1: how it would have got there five years after his
Speaker 1: death is anyone's guess. Perhaps he found the secret to
Speaker 1: time travel after all. In December twenty twenty, the David's
Speaker 1: Werner Gallery put out a statement that the mystery Utah
Speaker 1: monolith was indeed a bona fide McCracken, although Werner claimed
Speaker 1: to have no idea who put it there. However, many
Speaker 1: friends of the artists disagreed. A partner at the gallery
Speaker 1: who had worked closely with McCracken over the years, also
Speaker 1: disagreed with Werner, as did a number of the gallery staff. Eventually,
Speaker 1: David Bids Werner conceded that the monolith was most likely
Speaker 1: not a macraken piece, but had instead been made by
Speaker 1: someone else, paying homage to the deceased artist. The puzzle
Speaker 1: remained unsolved. The word monolith is somewhat of a misnomer
Speaker 1: for Utah's strange metallic plinth and its subsequent copycats. The
Speaker 1: Dictionary definition of a monolith is a large, single, upright
Speaker 1: block of stone, especially one shaped into or serving as
Speaker 1: a pillar or monument. There are several ancient and mysterious
Speaker 1: monoliths around the world. One of the oldest is thought
Speaker 1: to be the broken Manere of Agrath, a Neolithic relic
Speaker 1: dating from around four thousand, five hundred BCE in the
Speaker 1: province of Brittany, France, now fallen at about twenty one
Speaker 1: meters high. When it was upright, it would have houred
Speaker 1: over the surrounding landscape. The village of Asuka in Nara,
Speaker 1: central Japan, which dates back to two hundred and fifty CE,
Speaker 1: is also famous for its mysterious stones. The most well
Speaker 1: known is the rock Ship of Masuda, comprised of a
Speaker 1: huge block of granite, approximately eleven meters long, eight meters
Speaker 1: wide and five meters high and weighing over eight hundred tons,
Speaker 1: with a flattened top, curved sides, and two meters squared
Speaker 1: holes chiseled out at the top. It resembles the upturned
Speaker 1: hull of a boat and is considered a technical marvel
Speaker 1: for its age. Arguments still rage over its purpose. Some
Speaker 1: say it was a marker for a large burial tomb,
Speaker 1: others that it was used for astronomical observations. Then there
Speaker 1: are the Bulbeck Stones, six massive blocks of stone in
Speaker 1: what was ancient Heliopolis now modern day Lebanon, thought to
Speaker 1: be intended components of a planned temple of Jupiter. One
Speaker 1: is known as the Stone of the Pregnant Woman and
Speaker 1: thought to weigh around one thousand tons. The biggest, the
Speaker 1: Forgotten Stone, weighing an estimated sixteen hundred and fifty tons,
Speaker 1: is believed to have been the largest known stone to
Speaker 1: have been quarried in human history. But it seems that
Speaker 1: the great size of these stones was also their downfall,
Speaker 1: perhaps just too huge to maneuver. In the end, they
Speaker 1: were never being removed from the quarry and still lie
Speaker 1: close to where they were cut from the surrounding rock.
Speaker 1: Although their origins are obscure, All these ancient monoliths are
Speaker 1: very obviously the work of humans hewn from earth rocks.
Speaker 1: But what about something a little less earthly? The night
Speaker 1: of October nineteenth twenty seventeen was a typically tranquil one
Speaker 1: at the summit of Mount Holeakala on the island of Maui, Hawaii.
Speaker 1: The tops of fluffy white clouds covering the terrain hundreds
Speaker 1: of meters below glimmered dimly, reflecting the light from a
Speaker 1: myriad of stars overhead. The observatory's white telescope dome moved slowly,
Speaker 1: motor drives whirring softly, as the one point eight meter
Speaker 1: telescope inside precisely tracked the slow rotation of the night sky.
Speaker 1: The two telescopes of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid
Speaker 1: Response System, or PAN Stars, were built with the same
Speaker 1: wide field design used in the Hubble Telescope, part of
Speaker 1: a program funded by NASA to find and track asteroids
Speaker 1: and comets in Earth's neighborhood. The next morning, variously colored
Speaker 1: lights blinked on the console in the control room. Astronomer
Speaker 1: Robert Werick returned to his desk with a fresh cup
Speaker 1: of coffee and continued his work, poring over the images
Speaker 1: and data that the Panstar telescope had collected the previous night.
Speaker 1: So far, he'd found nothing noteworthy, but just then Wherick
Speaker 1: noticed with interest a faint point of light on one
Speaker 1: of the images, which, by referring to subsequent images, could
Speaker 1: be seen moving noticeably across the starry background, a typical
Speaker 1: telltale sign of a small, fast moving asteroid. The astronomer
Speaker 1: made a note to keep track of it. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: on subsequent nights he observed the same object again. The
Speaker 1: extra observations allowed him to calculate the orbit reasonably accurately,
Speaker 1: and those orbital computations did not fit with any asteroid
Speaker 1: or comet that had ever been observed before. Robert Werwick
Speaker 1: had found an object that must have come from interstellar space.
Speaker 1: It was an arrival that astronomers had been waiting a
Speaker 1: long time for. As observations came in from other large
Speaker 1: telescopes around the world, the trajectory of the object was
Speaker 1: more accurately confirmed. At first, it was classified as a comet.
Speaker 1: It had been discovered on September ninth, approximately forty days
Speaker 1: after it had passed its closest point to the Sun,
Speaker 1: and it was already hurtling back out into interstellar space.
Speaker 1: But there was something very strange about it. Comets are
Speaker 1: typically small bodies of dirty ice which warm up they
Speaker 1: pass around the Sun, causing the gas to sublimate around
Speaker 1: its core. This creates what's known as a coma, which
Speaker 1: also produces a pronounced tale of gas and dust. This
Speaker 1: new object showed none of those signs. Some of the
Speaker 1: world's largest optical telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope and
Speaker 1: the Seti Institutes Radio Telescope, were then turned on the object,
Speaker 1: which was already very faint and fast heading toward the
Speaker 1: outer reaches of the Solar System. Radio data was examined
Speaker 1: to see if it might be transmitting anything, but nothing
Speaker 1: was found. However, analysis by Karen Meech from the Institute
Speaker 1: for Astronomy in Hawaii found that the object varied in
Speaker 1: brightness by a factor of ten every seven hours. No
Speaker 1: previously known asteroid or comet had varied so widely in
Speaker 1: brightness and had such a large ratio between length and width.
Speaker 1: It was an extremely unusual monolith hurtling through space. Previously
Speaker 1: known celestial bodies with an elongated shape similar to the
Speaker 1: mystery object had been no more than three times longer
Speaker 1: than they were white. This object was around four hundred
Speaker 1: meters long but only forty meters wide. Whatever this thing was,
Speaker 1: it was cigar shape, and instead of rotating around its
Speaker 1: long axis, it was tumbling end over end through space.
Speaker 1: It had a dark reddish hue similar to other asteroids
Speaker 1: from the Outer Solar System, but appeared to be completely
Speaker 1: inert without the faintest hint of any emissions, suggestive of
Speaker 1: an object that was a dense composite of rock and
Speaker 1: metals with a surface reddened by light years of irradiation
Speaker 1: from cosmic rays. When the question of an official classification
Speaker 1: and name first came up, Rama was suggested from the
Speaker 1: name given to an alien spacecraft discovered under similar circumstances
Speaker 1: in Arthur C. Clark's nineteen seventy three novel Rendezvous with Rama.
Speaker 1: With scientists unable to determine what it was exactly, the
Speaker 1: object was eventually put in a new class all of
Speaker 1: its own and reclassified as interstellar asteroid one I two
Speaker 1: zero one seven U one. It was also given the
Speaker 1: name O Muamoor, from the Hawaiian word meaning scout or
Speaker 1: first distant messenger, to reflect the notion that the object
Speaker 1: was like a messenger sent from the distance and past
Speaker 1: and depths of space to reach out to humanity. Nobody
Speaker 1: could work out which star System. Oh muh Moor had
Speaker 1: come from planets, asteroids, and comets in our Solar System
Speaker 1: orbit around the Sun in closed loops. Oh muor Moor's
Speaker 1: path was hyperbolic. It had come hurtling in at just
Speaker 1: over twenty six kilometers per second relative to the Sun's
Speaker 1: motion from above the disk of the Solar System, so
Speaker 1: fast that the Sun's gravity could only deflect its path slightly.
Speaker 1: Why was it such an unusual shape, and how come
Speaker 1: its outward trajectory away from the Sun showed some non
Speaker 1: gravitational acceleration, typical behavior for a comet ejecting dust and
Speaker 1: water vapor to give it an extra push, but not
Speaker 1: for a seemingly inert object like O muamor. One year
Speaker 1: after O Muamua was discovered, a startling hypothesis was put
Speaker 1: forward by two Harvard astronomers, Avi Lobe and Schmuel Bayali
Speaker 1: in no lesser publication than the respected Astrophysical journal Letters.
Speaker 1: Having analyzed the objects excessive radial acceleration and dimensions, the
Speaker 1: pair concluded that O Muama represented a new class of
Speaker 1: thin interstellar material, possibly quote produced naturally through a yet
Speaker 1: unknown process in the interstellar medium. But they also proposed
Speaker 1: that O Mua Mua could have an artificial origin, being
Speaker 1: quite possibly a probe designed for interstellar travel, a type
Speaker 1: of interstellar light sail. Perhaps. The pair went on to
Speaker 1: argue that light sales with similar dimensions had already been
Speaker 1: built by our own civilization. Such light sail technology might
Speaker 1: be used by advanced alien civilizations to transport cargo between
Speaker 1: planets or stars, they suggest it. Or perhaps Ohmoormoor is
Speaker 1: a piece of space debris no longer operational and ejected
Speaker 1: from a planetary system, which would account for its unusual geometry,
Speaker 1: low thermal emissions, high reflectivity, and strange trajectory. The object's
Speaker 1: red surface color, very similar to the organic rich surfaces
Speaker 1: of normal Solar System comets, could just be a covering
Speaker 1: of interstellar dust, they wrote. But the Harvard astronomers went
Speaker 1: even further. Using existing pan stars data from known astrais
Speaker 1: ut Avi Lobe and Schmuel bay Aali calculated that there
Speaker 1: should be quite a lot of O Muamor like objects
Speaker 1: out there. If so, why weren't we seeing more? They
Speaker 1: concluded that the discrepancy meant O Muamor was not on
Speaker 1: a random trajectory, but instead a targeted probe. They later
Speaker 1: stated in their paper that O Muamor might even be
Speaker 1: a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth's vicinity by
Speaker 1: an alien civilization. By the time the pair had published
Speaker 1: their startling paper, it was too late to chase O
Speaker 1: Muamor with rockets. The technology did exist, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: available to deploy for the strange object's sudden appearance four
Speaker 1: years earlier. In November twenty fourteen, the European Space Agency's
Speaker 1: Rosetta probe became the first spacecraft to perform a soft
Speaker 1: landing on the surface of a comet. Things didn't exactly
Speaker 1: go to plan. The harpoon system failed, causing the craft
Speaker 1: to tumble for two hours before it finally settled. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the probe did send back some intriguing data, finding ammonia,
Speaker 1: hydrogen cyanide, and hydrogen sulfide on the comet's surface. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the European Space Agency announced that its
Speaker 1: new Comet Interceptor project will launch in twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Designed to lie in wait for long period comets coming
Speaker 1: from the Oort Cloud on the very edge of the
Speaker 1: Solar System, the probe will also be poised to potentially
Speaker 1: perform a close encounter with any other small interstellar object
Speaker 1: such as O Muamoor should one come by back on Earth.
Speaker 1: Metallic oneths like the one first seen in Utah in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty still appear fairly often. In June twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: Las Vegas police found another large metal pillar made out
Speaker 1: of a reflective sheet of metal and molded into a prism.
Speaker 1: It was found jutting out of rocks near Gas Peak,
Speaker 1: just outside of Las Vegas. The authorities removed it and
Speaker 1: took it to a secret location. It's still not clear
Speaker 1: exactly who was behind these objects and what their aim is. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: what any advanced alien civilization observing us from a distance
Speaker 1: is making of our puny attempts to reach out and
Speaker 1: touch strange large monoliths that come hurtling by our planet
Speaker 1: remains unexplained. Thank you as ever for listening to the show.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so.
Speaker 1: In some other news, Unexplained will be coming to YouTube
Speaker 1: very shortly in video form, so please watch out for
Speaker 1: future developments there. You can subscribe to the channel at
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com, forward slash at Unexplained Pod You can
Speaker 1: also now find us on TikTok at TikTok dot com,
Speaker 1: Forward Slash at Unexplained Podcast. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Diane Hope and produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Diane
Speaker 1: is an audio producer and sound recordsed in her own right.
Speaker 1: You can find out more about her work at Dianehope
Speaker 1: dot com and on Instagram at in the sound Field.
Speaker 1: Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
Speaker 1: McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
Speaker 1: are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The
Speaker 1: book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You
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Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
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