Scientist Fools the Internet with ‘Space Telescope’ Photo
Freedom Wire

Scientist Fools the Internet with ‘Space Telescope’ Photo

I am a space nut. I love all things related to outer space. I love the way that the planets look, I love the vastness of space itself, I love how ridiculously massive some of the objects that exist in our universe.

I’ve always been this way and it was very exciting when the James Webb space telescope was launched. This telescope gives us a look at our universe in ways that we never could have imagined was possible.

The James Webb telescope is providing us with some of the clearest pictures of far away objects. It’s such a marvelous time that we’re living in now that we can see objects in our universe that are billions of light years away from us. Something that we could never see in person if we were to try and travel there.

However, one photo shared by a French scientist has stirred up the internet. He shared a photo of what was presumed to be a distant star, but instead…was merely a piece of chorizo.

“Picture of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away from us,” Étienne Klein, director of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, told his nearly 100,000 Twitter followers. “It was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This level of detail… A new world is unveiled everyday.”

As you can see, this is a real scientist with a real verified Twitter account.

Some people were fooled by the photo of the meat slice, while others caught on. Ultimately, Klein came clean about the whole ordeal tweeting, “Well, when it’s cocktail hour, cognitive bias seems to find plenty to enjoy…” he wrote. “Beware of it. According to contemporary cosmology, no object related to Spanish charcuterie exists anywhere else other than on Earth.”

Because what you read on the internet, you never know who is trying to fool you.

Written by Jon Archer - August 9, 2022