“Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope,” Klein told his more than 91,000 Twitter followers. “This level of detail… A new world is revealed every day.” Thousands of people took the post at face value and retweeted it without comment.
A few days later, Klein admitted that what he shared was actually a photo of a chorizo slice against a black background. “In light of some comments, I feel compelled to clarify that this tweet showing an alleged image of Proxima Centauri was a joke,” Klein said. “Let us learn to be wary of arguments from positions of power as well as the spontaneous eloquence of certain images.”
Klein later apologized for the prank and told French news agency Le Point (via Vice ) that he posted the image to educate the public about the threat of fake news. “I also think that if I hadn’t said it was a James Webb picture, it wouldn’t have been as successful,” he noted. After all was said and done, Klein shared the recent JWST image of the Cartwheel galaxy. This time he was quick to assure his followers that the photo was authentic.
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