A French scientist has had to apologize for his spicy space prank after he tweeted a photo of a slice of chorizo, claiming it was a distant star captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Étienne Klein – physicist and director of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission – shared the photo of the charcuterie slice on Twitter last week, gushing about the “level of detail” it provided. “Image of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away. Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope,” read a translation of the tweet. “This level of detail… A new world is revealed every day.” Photo (REAL this time…) of the Chariot Wheel galaxy and its companion galaxies, taken by JWST. Located 500 million light-years away, it was undoubtedly a spiral in its past, but took on this strange appearance after a raging galactic pile-up. pic.twitter.com/vmiDjU1Gjt — Etienne KLEIN (@EtienneKlein) August 3, 2022 In a series of tweets that followed, Klein apologized, informing fans that smoked sausage is strictly mundane and a “form of entertainment.” “Well, when it’s cocktail hour, cognitive bias seems to find a lot to enjoy… Watch out. According to modern cosmology, no object related to Spanish sausages exists anywhere else but on Earth,” he wrote. “In light of some comments, I feel compelled to clarify that this tweet showing an alleged snapshot of Proxima Centauri was a form of fun,” he said in another tweet. “Let us learn to be as wary of the arguments of authority as of the spontaneous eloquence of certain images.” He later tweeted a photo of the Chariot Wheel galaxy, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, assuring followers that this time it was “for real”. “Photograph (REAL this time…) of the Chariot Wheel galaxy and its companion galaxies taken by JWST. Located 500 million light-years away, it was undoubtedly a spiral in its past, but took on this strange appearance after a raging galactic accretion,” the scientist wrote. Images from the James Webb Space Telescope went viral in July when the first images were released to the public in July, providing never-before-seen images of the universe and its countless galaxies. The $10 billion telescope — launching on December 25, 2021 — was a joint project involving NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency, and has already traveled 1 million miles into space.
