(ORDO NEWS) — In France, the director of the French Atomic Energy Commission, Etienne Klein, posted on social networks a new image of the star closest to the Sun, taken by the James Webb telescope, and got into a loud scandal.
Instead of the celestial body Proxima Centauri, he published a snapshot of a slice of Spanish sausage, the New York Post reported.
“Image of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away. Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope,” the scientist captioned the image, admiring the level of detail in the image.
The record quickly began to collect retweets, but it turned out that the “star” has the most earthly structure and is a sausage. In the comments to the post, Klein admitted that he decided to joke in this way, stating that “no object related to the Spanish sausage exists anywhere but on Earth.”
Some users attacked the director of the Atomic Energy Commission for spreading fakes, shaming him for publishing.
“As director of scientific research at CEA Officiel, it’s just inappropriate to post stuff like this,” one commenter said.
The story with sausage instead of a star got into the local media, after which the scientist had to apologize again.
“I would like to apologize to those whom my hoax, in which there was nothing original, could shock.
I just wanted to call for caution with frames that look attractive in themselves,” the scientist explained, after which he posted a real picture from the telescope.
James Webb is a joint project between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. On December 25 last year, the telescope was launched into space , and on January 5, an important launch phase was completed.
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