A black monolith was spotted strapped to the deck of a top-secret Royal Navy ship docked in London.

According to onlookers, the monolith emitted a high pitched screaming sound and was surrounded by scampering ape-like humanoids. Then everything went quiet until a calming Strauss waltz was heard.

A Royal Navy spokesperson told FNN:

This has nothing to do with the inscrutable Kubick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In fact this is a new kind of navigation device, called a quantum accelerometer, which replaces the need for GPS navigation and is essentially a chamber to hold, cool and measure a cloud of about one billion atoms of rubidium-87. The same atom found in Ribena.

Strangely, while the Navy's XV Patrick Blackett was docked, its was approached by a white Beluga whale offering free caviar to the sailors onboard.