In a remote stretch of New Mexico desert, a geometric monument and a cluster of otherworldly rock formations have been recast online as a “portal to another universe.” The claim taps into a long tradition of Southwestern mystery, from strange lights in the sky to ancient carvings that some interpret as gateways to other realms. I set out to trace what is actually on the ground, what scientists say about parallel worlds, and why this landscape keeps inviting people to imagine a doorway out of our own.
The story that has taken hold blends three strands: a modern monument near Deming, eerie hoodoos that look like alien architecture, and a wave of recent fascination with “portals” from Denver museums to deep space. The result is less a single discovery than a collision of place, physics and myth, all converging on New Mexico’s high desert.
The desert monument that sparked the “portal” myth
The physical heart of the rumor sits just southeast of Deming, New Mexico, off Interstate 10, where a stark concrete and metal installation known locally as the Triangles rises from otherwise empty desert. Visitors reach it by turning near the Continental Divide Trading Post, a roadside stop that has become the unofficial gateway to this oddity in the sand, and the structure’s sharp lines and isolated setting make it easy to see why some have started calling it a doorway. In online videos, guides like Steve and the channel Sidetrack Adventures walk viewers through the site, framing the Triangles as a kind of intersection between the mundane highway world and a more speculative one beyond the horizon, with the Continental Divide Training Post and nearby Inters exit serving as familiar landmarks before the landscape suddenly empties out into silence and geometry.
One detailed tour describes how, Just southeast of Deming and the busy Interstate, the Triangles stand alone in a remote part of the desert, Unlike most monuments that commemorate a clear event or person, this one offers no obvious plaque or explanation, which has encouraged visitors to project their own stories onto it. In that account, the Triangles are explicitly linked to ideas of events that might have happened in a parallel universe, a framing that has helped the site migrate from obscure local curiosity to viral “portal” in social media posts that rarely mention its likely origins as a piece of land art or a private memorial. Unverified based on available sources is any formal designation of the Triangles as an official artwork or scientific instrument, which leaves the field open for more exotic interpretations.
A landscape that already looks like another planet
The Triangles are not the only reason this part of New Mexico feels like a set from science fiction. To the north, the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness Study Area near Bloomfield, New Mexico, is filled with eroded badlands, mushroom shaped hoodoos and scattered fossils that make the ground itself look alien. Visitors describe The Ah, Shi, Sle, Pah Wilderness Study Area in Bloomfield, New Mexico as “geologic eye candy,” a place where soft sandstone has been carved by wind and water into spires and balanced rocks that resemble spacecraft or frozen waves, and the absence of trees or buildings only heightens the sense that you have stepped off Earth.
On tribal land a bit over an hour south of Farmington, a formation known as Alien Throne rises from a pocket of badlands called the Valley of Dreams, its arching rock and narrow base giving it the silhouette of a colossal chair for some off world ruler. Guides describe Alien Throne as a hoodoo sculpted by rain and other flowing water, Located near the Shi, Sle, Pah Wilderness and accessible from Farmington by rough roads that deter casual tourists. When you stand beneath that stone arch at dusk, with no cell signal and only the wind for company, it is not hard to see why some hikers talk about the spot as a threshold, even if the only forces at work are erosion and time.
From Denver’s “underworld portal” to New Mexico’s cosmic branding
The language of portals has been primed elsewhere in the Southwest. In Denver, museum curators recently unveiled a carved Olmec monument that archaeologists and journalists alike have described as a “portal to the underworld,” a phrase rooted in the artifact’s original religious meaning rather than any literal gateway. Reports explain how the piece, linked by Archaeologist David Grove to the ancient Olmec culture, was broken into 25 pieces to ease smuggling, then reassembled after it reached Denver in 2023, with Many details of its journey now central to debates about stolen antiquities and cultural restitution. The stone itself, with its flaring eyes and gaping mouth, has become a magnet for stories about crossing between worlds, even as curators emphasize its historical and spiritual context.
Coverage of the Denver artifact notes that An Ancient Portal to the Underworld Was Found in Denver only in the sense that a long displaced religious object has been identified and displayed, not that a functional gateway has opened beneath the Rockies. Features on the piece explain that Here visitors learn how it was Originally stolen sometime in the early 20th century, then tracked by officials working in stolen antiquities before arriving in Colorado, and podcasts from WON have used the story as a springboard to explore how ancient cultures imagined entrances to realms of the dead. When that kind of language circulates widely, it is a short step for influencers to borrow the same “portal” framing for any dramatic site, from a museum gallery to a lonely monument outside Deming.
Science’s multiverse and the lure of parallel worlds
While tourists and TikTok creators talk about portals in metaphor, physicists are wrestling with a different kind of gateway, the possibility that our universe is only one of many. Recent work in Space and Physics has highlighted a giant ring of galaxies that appears to stretch across a vast swath of the sky, a structure so large that it may challenge the long standing assumption that matter is evenly distributed on the biggest scales. In one analysis, By Maria Temming describes how this giant ring joins a growing list of huge structures that should not exist if the standard cosmology principle holds, suggesting that our current models of how the universe evolved might be incomplete.
Further discussion of the same data notes that the ring is apparently an extension of other large scale features astronomers map out as they chart how galaxies cluster, and that its shape, likened to a cyclops eye over a smile, hints at patterns that standard theory struggles to explain. In a companion piece, Jan is cited in connection with the idea that physics theories about the multiverse are stranger than fiction, with some models proposing that our observable cosmos is just one bubble in a larger foam of universes. None of this implies a literal doorway in the New Mexico desert, but it does mean that when visitors stand at the Triangles and talk about parallel realities, they are echoing, in very loose form, questions that cosmologists are actually debating as they study the giant ring and other anomalies.
New Mexico’s skies, new planets and the power of suggestion
The sense that New Mexico sits on a cosmic fault line is reinforced every time something unusual appears in its skies. Earlier this year, residents around Alamogordo reported strange moving lights overhead, prompting headlines that asked whether they were an Alien Craft or a Top Secret Test from Holloman AFB. Local coverage described how an Image of the Mysterious Lights Reported Over Alamogordo Skies circulated widely, with some speculating about an Alien Craft while others pointed to the possibility of a Top Secret Test linked to Holloman AFB, and follow up reporting noted that witnesses allegedly met with military personnel to share what they had seen. On social media, the same clips were quickly folded into broader narratives about portals and visitors from other dimensions.
More from Morning Overview
