Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/k01dc3/mysterious_m...
> I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more rounded indicating a more exposed area and erosion), the texture of the canyon floor (flat rock vs sloped indicating higher up in a watershed with infrequent water), and the larger cliff/mesa in the upper background of one of the photos. I took all that and lined it up with the flight time and flight path of the helicopter - earlier in the morning taking off from Monticello, UT and flying almost directly north before going off radar (usually indicating it dropped below radar scan altitude. From there, I know I am looking for a south/east facing canyon with rounded red/white rock, most likely close to the base of a larger cliff/mesa, most likely closer to the top of a watershed, and with a suitable flat area for an AS350 helicopter to land. Took about 30 minutes of random checks around the Green River/Colorado River junction before finding similar terrain. From there it took another 15 minutes to find the exact canyon. Yes... I'm a freak.
https://old.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/jzw628/help_me_f...
It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[1]
Geospatially, assuming 10m resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique location on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans).
Searching for a ~1m^2 monolith visually within a 10m^2 square is reasonable.
GNU units:
You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2)
You want:
Definition: 43.798784
You have: ln((1 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2)
You want:
Definition: 45.535749
For comparison, cellphone positioning accuracy is typically 8--600m:
- 3G iPhone w/ A-GPS ~ 8 meters
- 3G iPhone w/ wifi ~ 74 meters
- 3G iPhone w/ Cellular positioning ~ 600 meters
https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accur...
https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/
________________________________
Notes:
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/
Likewise, identifying a random location on earth from a photo is certainly doable, but I would say it has less to do with the logarithm of the surface area of the earth and much more to do with expertise in geography, geology, etc.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good...
Seems like every 'weird job' or skill gets you an American reality TV contract these days. Either that or some Youtube followers.
Not sure which is more likely.
Some people are just insane at that game.
What you want is impunity.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-...
Enhance.
There it is.
"I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more rounded indicating a more exposed area and erosion), the texture of the canyon floor (flat rock vs sloped indicating higher up in a watershed with infrequent water), and the larger cliff/mesa in the upper background of one of the photos. I took all that and lined it up with the flight time and flight path of the helicopter - earlier in the morning taking off from Monticello, UT and flying almost directly north before going off radar (usually indicating it dropped below radar scan altitude. From there, I know I am looking for a south/east facing canyon with rounded red/white rock, most likely close to the base of a larger cliff/mesa, most likely closer to the top of a watershed, and with a suitable flat area for an AS350 helicopter to land. Took about 30 minutes of random checks around the Green River/Colorado River junction before finding similar terrain. From there it took another 15 minutes to find the exact canyon. Yes... I'm a freak."
u/Bear__Fucker
https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/jzw628/help_me_f...
I'm still gobsmacked about the specific geological knowledge and application here turning into a very precise and relatively small search area.
The geological part is nice but not necessary (you just need to be able to tell the colors of rocks).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770521/
They had a scene that was "outside Gainesville, FL". That's where I went to university and from the highway it's basically flat forests. The scene instead looked semi-arid with mountains in the background...
Ah, looks like my exact story is documented exactly on IMDB!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770521/goofs?item=gf0809526
The show only lasted 6 episodes, so...
My bet is someone living in Moab wanted to do a desert art project and chose this location that was reasonably close, but still fairly remote.
People do all kinds of stuff out in the desert around Moab.
Just about 10-20 miles northwest of this monolith there's a small slacklining festival called GGBY held in a similarly remote location. Look up Fruit Bowl Highline Area on google maps and check out youtube to see some of the wild stuff people do!
Unless the artist practiced very good OpSec or was so disciplined that he never checked for satellite imagery of his monument, someone with the right credentials -- like the government with a subpeona or a Google insider -- could identify the artist based on his IP address.
Murderers have been identified and convicted by looking up a unique map coordinate on Google Maps, even going back as far Yahoo Maps.
That's...a surprisingly small amount to fake your own death over.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/11/us/internet-used-to-find-...
> The federal complaint says ... the newspaper received a letter that said ''nice sob story,'' with a computer-generated map showing an intersection in West Alton in St. Charles County, along with a handwritten X.
> ... searchers found human skeletal remains within 50 yards of the location shown by the map's X, about 300 yards from where the decomposed bodies of Ms. Wilson and another victim, Verona Thompson, had been found.
> A search by Illinois State Police of Internet mapping companies led to an exact match between features on a map sent to the Post-Dispatch and one found on Expedia.com.
> On June 3, the Microsoft Corporation, which tracks access to that Web site, showed the F.B.I. that only someone with the Internet Provider address 65.227.106.78 visited the Expedia.com site and searched the West Alton area within days of the map's mailing to the Post-Dispatch. The user name of that IP address was ''MSN/maurytravis.''
It's just basic detective work, updated for new technology.
The 'monolith' is just a bit SE of the "Dead Horse Point" (SW of Moab), just on the east side of the river on this map [1].
"Discover food deliveries nearby"
Fairly sure that's going to be a tough challenge at that location!
The Lightning Field:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lightning_Field
Spiral Jetty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Jetty
Negative Space:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Negative_(artwork)
Amarillo Ramp:
The Palo Alto airport information [1] says: "+100 FT TRANSMISSION TWRS E OF ARPT".
That seems a very strange request given that it is public land. If it were private property that would be different, but this location is owned by the public.
Also, if it’s a memorial, it seems he might want people to visit it. Isn’t that the point of a memorial? To remember something?
That's an unreasonable request without an explanation.
well done
I can no longer edit or delete my parent comment here.
I think I can infer from the wiki page that this either fell through, or my friend was making stuff up, because it appears to be at a metalworking shop.
At least this one lives on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_Ends_Park
If there were a blanket "Leave it alone, it's art" policy, I can see junk popping up everywhere.
Is that really true though? Does earth rules apply to life from other planets? And what if the extraterrestrial life are magnitudes of order stronger and technologically advanced than us? I mean we could demand it but in effect it would be nothing but words. The only reason that laws work is because of the threat of what happens if you don’t obey. If we are not in a position to threaten the extra terrestrials then we are also not in a position to dictate rules for them to follow.
Any law applys to their territory, independant on whether the culprit is a citizen of that country or a foreigner. Whether they can execute the law is of course a different story. But from where someone comes from doesnt matter in the first place.
Though, you could argue whether laws are limited to humans or whether they apply to every species. AFter all we don't apply the same laws to animals and humans, there are usually differnt sets for each.
> The only reason that laws work is because of the threat of what happens if you don’t obey. If we are not in a position to threaten the extra terrestrials then we are also not in a position to dictate rules for them to follow.
This is a classical problem of international laws. Country A can't execute laws to citizien of country B, because country B is stinky, or citizien already has left country A. Usually there are contracts for this, so in certain cases country B will give their citizien to Country A if the case is heavy enough to justify such an act. But of course they can also just ignore it.
Please enlighten me on which laws are written for my cat.
Though, usually it's not laws which are meant to be understood by the animals. Those laws are about how humans handle and integrate animals in their human society. They regulate who can own a pet, what rights and duties they have and which rights other people around those animals have (landlords for example, or research facilities doing animal experimentation).
But usually you will not find a law that demands your cat to go to school, or wear clothes, or paying taxes, that it's forbidden to enter private ground, to steal or kill, and such things. As also anything like having any citizen-rights and duties coming with them. Majority of laws are written for people who are able to understand them and can follow them, not for those who are living besides us.
It looks like aluminum. Someone posted 23.5" x 23.5" x ~144" as the dimensions. This comes out to be 46 cubic feet, and would weigh about 7,700 lbs. A floor of the price would be ~40 cents/lb scrap price, or ~$3,100. Ballpark 80-120 cents/lb might be a more realistic price if it were straightforward to manufacture like that (which it's certainly not).
As an industrial engineer and former employee of one of the largest aluminum plants in the world, I can safely say I doubt it is solid rolled aluminum, and bet it would be way bigger of an extrusion that is possible. And logistically, it would be far easier to transport to a remote location via helicopter if it wasn't solid. Any machining, metal forming, etc. would require specialized large equipment, and would quickly drive the cost up, potentially an order of magnitude higher than material costs.
The monolith in 2001 had dimensions in ratios of 1:4:9 [and continuing into other dimensions...].
Why the heck would you go to all the work of putting a monolith of the wrong shape out there?
It seems unlikely that there are serious tolerances to be kept here, couldn't this just be cast messily using a sand/clay mould and then cleaned up with portable power tools?
That way you don't need any special equipment and you can use whatever Aluminium you can get your hands on. Hell, you can even recycle Aluminium cans.
Cue reddit researchers combing through old helicopter flight plans/paths from the relevant time frame? Though I would have thought an off road vehicle might be more likely; looks like it's only about 2-3 miles from the nearest road.
Edit: actually there appears to be a dirt road ~1k feet or less away
The monolith is about 141" long, and has sides of about 23.5", so 16 of those bars would neatly fill it.
So if it is solid aluminium, that's about $23,500 in material.
[0]: https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/buy/aluminum/6-aluminum-squa...
Using the weight calculator [1], and plugging in 23.5/23.5/141 (all in inches) I am getting about 7.7K lbs, or around $15K in material costs. Given it’s unusual shape, I’m assuming that normal is producing it. This would require additional costs for machining and processing Dash I’d probably say it would be several thousand dollars in additional costs. Overall this looks to me like a $25,000 piece of metal...
[1] https://www.bostoncenterless.com/tools/metal-weight-calculat...
[2] https://fastmetals.com/collections/aluminum-extruded-square-...
Given that the excitement will have died down by the time its precise structure is revealed, I'd say a simpler design served its purpose quite well.
Assuming the "monolith" is around 10ft tall with a 1.5ft square base, it would weigh 5 tonnes if it were made of solid steel. Whoever installed it would have needed serious machinery to haul it over there and stick it in the rock.
Thin sheets of metal, either welded or riveted together, would have been much easier to build and install. It could even have been filled with some other material (e.g. sand) before the top was put on.
‘This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,’ the voice continued. ‘As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.’
An old advanced alien civilization created thousands of these QTD, and sent them all over the galaxy, to land on rocky habitable planets, waiting to be discovered one day.
In essence, these devices are synchronized with a quantum clock, for instantaneous bidirectional quantum communication across vast interstellar distances.
It uses the essence of quantum entanglement, whereby every nanosecond, a quantum bit is revealed, and its complement device is triggered. Thus allowing for massive instantaneous communication across vast interstellar distances.
Furthermore, by standing in front of the QTD device, and eliciting an audible command, the device will scan the subject in front of it, and allow himself to be dematerialized and transported to any other node in the interstellar QTD network. Some may call this a Stargate.
Or it was planted there by some hippy high on shrooms.
Humans have no way of making bulk quasicrystals.
^ Pretty interesting, for those of us who haven't heard about these yet. I at first assumed this was a joke like Unobtanium.
Looks like there has been some work on NMR of quasicrystals [1].
Zeeman splitting of spectral lines requires a magnetic field. Maybe if a large quasicrystal passed near a magnetar [3] one would see an effect.
[0]: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/26/7077 [1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03166327 [2]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990ApJS...74..437S [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar
"So what is it you do for a living?"
eg: Buttons? display? big red button? wifi password? :>
None of the photos or video seems to have looked there yet. ;)
In any case, there is a little monument there with a wifi password and a solar panel. If you sit next to it on a sunny day, there is enough power to run the wifi and a web server which will give you some basic historical and geological info on the place.
But I am hoping its alien tech ... I think we will find out soon
"Kamacite is an alloy of iron and nickel, which is found on Earth only in meteorites."[0]
As a bonus, it's shiny grey, which means it could even be what this monolith is made of.
And as it all over world's media I guess they have succeeded.
I bet they are still counting.
pentagon confirmed aliens and nobody cared, 2020 is weird.
I understand not wanting to set a precedent, but I wish more organizations adopted a mindset that the original can stay, but no others are allowed. That leaves space for a little bit of whimsy.
Leave it be, and leave the rule in place. If there's an epidemic of monoliths being planted on federal land, then you uproot them all and say "this is why we can't have nice things."
Until or unless that happens, just leave it alone.
If you allow the original but remove a 2nd and it is goverment land, are you opening yourself up to legal issues regarding the 1st amendment.
Change the law, and/or file an injunction to stop it's removal if that is your wish.
But I firmly believe that The Rule of Law matters in our country.
Specific to this case, it's not an organization, it's a federal law. And whimsy might bring cheer to you and I, but it does not really belong in federal law.
>The department has not disclosed the exact location of the monolith, fearing explorers may try to seek it out and "become stranded". The big horn sheep wildlife officials were counting are native to many parts of southern Utah, where the terrain is rugged.
FWIW, I find this piece of trash to be a showoff moment for some wannabe 'artist'. Mimicking a movie prop to me sounds like a low-effort, untalented mindset.
This isn't that great, it's not worthy of any sort of exception here.
People are really suffering from "it's new and shiny" syndrome.
But seriously, they should examine the monolith's RF characteristics, monitor/test the field strength around the thing to determine its size and whether it is wired into something.
hmm. we've been shamed out of questioning things due to that one label.
> but is it even remotely possible that this could be a prototype of the Xbox Series X
reminds me of Simpsons episode where they found angel bones but it was used as advertising for the grand opening of a new shopping mall
Also, you can see the construction methods.
So, "Monorabd"?
Monosider?
"This means something..."
I have a lisp - but I am very monotonous.
But that was an eggregious driver. Previous version: ~15 modules. Rewritten by some purist: 900(!) modules. I kid you not.
There is a similar game mechanism in Will Wright's 1990 title SimEarth.
You feel it's cool and big, because you're looking at the story of going from the origins of life to the galaxy, but the gameplay doesn't actually support that ambition. Most of what you accomplish has very little impact; it's just a series of hoops you need to jump through, so that you can say that you did them.
And not summon an alien or demon or whatever during the one of the worst years in our lifetimes."
This was the best part of the article.
“It’s obviously Bigfoot, the human/ape hybrid the greys use when on Earth.”, says a source near to the monolith.
I forgot where I have left it years ago ...
Mr Hutchings speculated that the monolith may have been installed by "some new wave artist", or a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1968 film directed by Stanley Kubrick.
What's really fascinating is how such projects are funded. The cost estimates are probably wrong but why?