The internet erupted. Professor Pierre Toussaint, a respected astrophysicist with a penchant for the dramatic (and, it turned out, a playful sense of humor), had posted a stunning image on X (formerly Twitter). It was, he declared, a groundbreaking shot of a distant star, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope – a picture of unparalleled clarity showing swirling nebulas and intricate details unseen before. The image itself was breathtaking, a vibrant swirl of reds, oranges, and browns, hinting at cosmic wonders beyond human comprehension. Thousands retweeted, commented, and shared the image in awe. News outlets picked up the story, heralding a new era in astronomical observation. Professor Toussaint basked in the glow of viral fame, replying to enthusiastic comments with cryptic pronouncements about the mysteries of the cosmos. Then, the punchline landed. A few hours later, Toussaint posted a follow-up tweet, accompanied by a slightly sheepish emoji. "Oops," he wrote. "Looks like I got carried away with my lunch." He then unveiled the truth: the awe-inspiring "star" was, in fact, a close-up photograph of a slice of chorizo. The internet, initially stunned into silence, exploded anew, this time with a mixture of laughter, disbelief, and a healthy dose of exasperation. Some praised the prank’s audacity, others condemned its potential to mislead the public, and countless memes were born overnight. The image of the chorizo, now permanently etched in internet history, became a symbol of the blurry lines between fact and fiction in the age of social media. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of information dissemination in the digital age and the ease with which misinformation, even unintentionally, can spread like wildfire. Professor Toussaint, despite facing criticism for his prank, maintained that his intention was to encourage critical thinking and remind everyone to verify sources. Whether his methods were effective remained a subject of ongoing debate, but one thing was certain: the chorizo image had successfully launched a thousand think pieces.
A red ball of spicy fire with luminous patches glowing menacingly against a black background.
This, prominent French scientist Etienne Klein declared, was the latest astonishing picture taken by the of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun.
Fellow Twitter users marveled at the details on the picture purportedly taken by the telescope, which has thrilled the world with images of distant galaxies going back to the birth of the universe.
"This level of detail... A new world is revealed every day," he gushed.
But in fact, as Klein later revealed, the picture was not of the intriguing star just over four light-years from the Sun but a far more modest slice of the lip-sizzling Spanish sausage chorizo.
"According to contemporary cosmology, no object belonging to Spanish charcuterie exists anywhere but on Earth," he said.
Klein — who has more than 91,000 followers on Twitter — acknowledged that many users had not understood his joke which he said was simply aimed at encouraging us "to be wary of arguments from people in positions of authority as well as the spontaneous eloquence of certain images."
However, at a time when battling fake news is of paramount importance for the scientific community, many Twitter users indicated they were unamused by Klein, director of research at France's Atomic Energy Commission and a radio show producer.
On Wednesday, .
"I come to present my apologies to those who may have been shocked by my prank, which had nothing original about it," he said, describing the post as a "scientist's joke."
He was shortly back on surer ground posting on Twitter an image of the taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This time, he assured users, the photo was real.
Last month, NASA unveiled other spectacular from the telescope, showcasing interacting galaxies, the death throes of a doomed star and a stellar nursery where massive young suns are being born, blazing with gale-force solar winds that sculpt vast clouds of gas and dust.
Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which mostly observes light in the visible part of the spectrum, Webb is optimized to study longer-wavelength infrared radiation, allowing it to capture light from the dawn of the universe that's been stretched out by the expansion of space itself over the past 13.8 billion years.
