Last week, French scientist Étienne Klein tweeted a picture of what he claimed to be of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. He claimed that the picture was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and it was the most unique picture of its kind because of the “level of detail.”
Well, it was apparently all a prank. It was not a picture of the star. In fact, it wasn’t of anything in space at all. Nope, it was of a slice of chorizo.
Klein revealed the ruse in a series of follow-up tweets saying, “In view of some comments, I feel compelled to clarify that this tweet showing an alleged snapshot of Proxima Centauri was a form of amusement. Let us learn to be wary of arguments from authority as much as of the spontaneous eloquence of certain images.”
The first images released from the James Webb Space Telescope went viral last month after providing a never-before-seen images of the universe and its countless galaxies.
Per the New York Post, the $10 billion telescope was a joint project involving NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency, and has thus far travelled 1 million miles through space.
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