A now-familiar phenomenon seems to be cropping up again. After several similar appearances a few years ago, someone has erected a metallic object in the desert to the north of Las Vegas. Authorities discovered it over the weekend and are incorrectly describing it as a "monolith." It appears quite tall and it's made of gleaming metal, likely either aluminum or some other form of sheet metal. It appears to be four-sided and one witness described it as being "carefully planted" and there were no vehicle tracks seen in the area around it. This one is similar to an object found in the Utah desert in 2020, along with others found in California and Europe. (Fox 5 Vegas)

A mysterious monolith was discovered north of the Las Vegas Valley.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said their Search and Rescue team discovered the strange formation over the weekend.

It was located near Gass Peak in the northern area of the valley.

Las Vegas police used the strange formation to remind hikers to the “TRAIL” acronym while enjoying the outdoors.

You can see some better, close-up photos of the object in this report from CNN. The reason I'm being somewhat pedantic about all of these news outlets calling this thing a monolith is that the word literally translates to mean "single stone." True monoliths can be found all over the world, with the famous obelisks in Egypt being classic examples. The object near Las Vegas wouldn't qualify as an obelisk either. It's clearly a man-made structure fashioned out of metal (assuming we're skipping past a suggestion that aliens were involved). We could more properly call it a hexahedron, but that's not nearly as sexy of a name as a monolith, I suppose. 

Most of us are only hearing about this one now but it may not actually be "new" at all. Some locals posting comments on the Las Vegas PD Facebook page where they announced the discovery claimed that people have been seeing this thing "for years." Another said that hikers mention it "weekly." I'm not so sure about that, however. The metal this thing is made of absolutely gleams and the reflections created on it are crystal clear. It seems as if it would at least be a bit more ragged if it had been standing out there in the weather for that long.

So who is making these things and why are they doing it? Nobody seems to know. Some people have come forward and claimed to be the creators of previous installations, but it was unclear if they were true creators or just people seeking attention. This could easily be someone's idea of a work of art. There doesn't appear to be any sort of obvious message associated with it and the previous ones didn't seem to have anything inside of them. As far as I'm concerned, we can just write this off as a prank or an example of some copycat trying to replicate what others have done to try to grab their own fifteen minutes of fame. Unless some aliens show up to take credit for it, of course.

Here is some better video from Inside Edition.