New clues have surfaced in the disappearance of a gleaming monolith in Utah that seemed to melt away as mysteriously as it appeared in the desert — although it is no longer the only place where a strange structure has come and gone.
Colorado photographer Ross Bernards told KSTU-TV that he saw four men at the remote Utah site on Friday night and push over the hollow, stainless steel object.
“Right after it had fallen over and made a loud thud, one of them said: ‘This is why you don’t leave trash in the desert,’” Bernards told the Salt Lake City TV station.
Photo: AP
The group broke the structure into pieces, loaded it into a wheelbarrow and left, he said.
“As they were loading it up and walking away, they just said: ‘Leave no trace,’” he said.
The sheriff’s office in San Juan County has said that it is not planning an investigation into the disappearance of the monolith, which had been placed without permission on public land.
However, authorities also said that they would accept tips from any of the hundreds of visitors who trekked out to see the otherworldly gleaming object deep in the desert.
The sheriff and the Utah Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the land where the object was placed, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on whether they are investigating the removal that Bernards’ group photographed.
The mysterious structure that evoked the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey generated international attention and drew plenty of speculation about otherworldly origins, although officials said that it was an earthly creation of riveted plates of stainless steel.
For Bernards, the visitors’ damage to the environment convinced him that the remote area was better off without the structure.
“Leave the art to places where art should be and let mother nature have her space for art,” he said.
Utah is not the only place a monolith emerged. A similar metal structure was found on a hill in northern Romania, in the city of Piatra Neamt, but has since disappeared, according to Robert Iosub, a journalist with the local publication ziarpiatraneamt.ro.
Whoever placed the object did not follow the proper steps and get a building permit, Piatra Neamt Mayor Andrei Carabelea said on Facebook over the weekend.
Still, Carabelea took it in stride, joking that some “cheeky and terrible” alien teenagers were likely putting them up around the world.
“I am honored they chose our city,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese