The scientist’s image of a “distant star” was actually a slice of chorizo

A French scientist has apologized after tweeting a photo of a slice of chorizo ​​that he claimed was a deep space image of a “distant star” taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Etienne KleinAnd the Physicist and Research Director at the French Authority for Alternative Energies and Atomic EnergyAnd the He shared the spicy Spanish sausage on social media last week, praising the “level of detail” it provided.

“Image of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light-years away from us. Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. This level of detail…a new world is being unveiled every day,” he wrote on Twitter. Sunday to over 91,000 followers.

The first images from the $10 billion telescope – which launched on December 25, 2021 – circulated throughout July when they were released to the public. The Scientific Marvel, a joint project of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency, has traveled a million miles through space.

A few days after its publication, Klein revealed that the image he tweeted is not from the most powerful space telescope in the world. He admitted he tweeted a slice of corned beef.

“When it’s appetizer time, cognitive biases seem to have a field day…beware of them, then,” Play in more tweets. “According to contemporary cosmology, there is no being that belongs to the Spanish Charcuterie anywhere but on Earth.”