Sorry, That James Webb Space Telescope ‘Image’ Is Just a Close-Up of a Sausage
French scientist Étienne Klein tweeted the image as a joke and a cautionary tale about fake news, but it seems some people took him seriously.
By Michael Kan
Did you see a stunning image of Proxima Centauri taken by the James Webb Space Telescope online last week? Sorry, you’ve been duped. The photo does not depict the nearest star to our Sun; it’s just a piece of chorizo.
This past weekend, French physicist Étienne Klein posted an image on Twitter, and claimed the space telescope had taken the image of Proxima Centauri, which resides 4.2 light years away.
The image seemingly shows the nearby star’s red surface in a close-up view no other telescope has ever achieved. “This level of detail… A new world is revealed day after day,” Klein wrote in the tweet. However, the French scientist later followed up the tweet with two other posts to say the image was a prank intended to warn people about “cognitive biases.”
“According to contemporary cosmology, no object belonging to Spanish charcuterie exists anywhere but on Earth,” he added.
Klein wasn’t the only one to post the prank image. Prior to Klein’s tweet, Astrophysicist Peter Coles made a similar joke with the same image: “These #JWST images just get better and better…” he wrote in his own tweet.
Still, not everyone realized they were staring at a slice of sausage instead of a star. Klein’s purported image of Proxima Centauri was retweeted 1,700 times and attracted over 12,500 likes.
To stop the misinformation, Klein on Wednesday posted another tweet, clearly stating the image is a fake (though the original tweet remains). “I come to present my apologies to those whom my hoax, which had nothing original about it, may have shocked,” Klein wrote. His goal was to urge the public to be cautious around fake news.
“I also think that if I hadn’t said it was a James Webb photo, it wouldn’t have been so successful,” he told the French publication Le Point.
Not helping the matter is how astronomers have been sharing real photos taken from the James Webb Space Telescope on Twitter, which can make it hard to decipher what’s official and what’s not. So it’s always a good idea to look for the original source of the images. You can also follow the official James Space Webb Telescope account on Twitter for the latest captured photos.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
