The launch and installation of the James Webb Space Telescope, better known as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of NASA, has represented the beginning of a new era in the history of space observation.
Not long ago, the scientific community and stargazers were fascinated by the release of the first images captured by this artifact.
Since then, any finding photographed by the JWST has attracted our attention, although sometimes there is not really much to appreciate in the images released.
Such was the case last July when they photographed GLASS-z13a galaxy that dates from 300 to 400 million years after the Big Bang and that would be the oldest in the universe.
But, in the image, to be honest, that ancient astral formation looked like a red blur. Which triggered an apparent joke that someone took seriously.
The sausage that was not photographed by the James Webb telescope
Since the news of GLASS-z13 the reality is that there has been little news about the JWST, many were thirsty for some new image, but others had been left with the almost comical impression that the image of the smudge had produced.
And it is in this context that Etienne Klein, director of the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) of France, published through his personal Twitter account a majestic photograph with the following message:
Photo of Proxima du Centaure, l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil, situated at 4.2 année-lumière de nous.
Elle a été prize par le JWST.
Ce level de détails… A nouveau world is revealed jour après jour. pic.twitter.com/88UBbHDQ7Z—Etienne KLEIN (@EtienneKlein) July 31, 2022
“Photo of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, 4.2 light years from us. It was taken over by the JWST. This level of detail… A new world unfolds day after day.”
In the modern times we live in, it was enough to see the identity of the account and never read the rest of the conversation thread to validate the veracity of the strange photograph.
So some media and other “experts” soon began to spread the photo until it exceeded 19 thousand likes on the social network. At the same time, some specialized media replicated the news.
But it was enough even to look at the portrait a little carefully to realize that it was a sausage, literally. This is how Klein himself recounts it for the Huffington Post:
“Some immediately understood the hoax but it also took two extra tweets to clear it up. This also illustrates the fact that, on this type of social media, fake news is always more successful than real news.”
If someone had stopped to read the rest of the tweets in the thread, they would have realized that it was all a joke.