Chorizo Prank Only The Topping On The Issue

Celebrated French physicist Étienne Klein was forced to apologise after sharing what he claimed was an incredible photograph of a new star. In reality, it was a slice of chorizo. 

Sharing the photo on his Twitter handle on the 31st, July, he said that the image was that of Proxima Centauri, which is the star closest to Earth. He claimed the James Webb Space Telescope had been used to capture the picture, from which a whole host of captivating images have been revealed in the past couple of weeks. 

He shared the image with the words: 

“This level of detail…’

“A new world is revealed day after day.”

As we all know now, the image is a slice of chorizo. Once the truth is known, it’s hard to imagine it as anything else. 

However, when told by a leading physicist that the image is of a star, it’s not hard to see why many people believed him. After all, the image does contain the swirling white and deep red colours of a star. 

Chorizo and credit where its due

After an hour had passed, Étienne Klein broke cover, revealing the tweet was a joke. He made a quip about giving into cognitive biases when hungry, and that people should be aware.

He continued:

“According to contemporary cosmology, no object belonging to Spanish charcuterie exists anywhere but on Earth.”

However, a lot of his followers were not happy with this. They remarked that Dr. Klein had been irresponsible in trying to trick people. 

One follower said that it was vital to be able to trust scientists so that we could prevent being manipulated by incorrect stories. There was a concern that a lot of people would have seen the original post, but they may not have seen the correction or the admission of it being a joke. 

To make matters worse, the chorizo joke did not seem to be Dr Klein’s own, with other Twitter handles posting it previously. This led to him also being called out for not giving anyone credit for the tweet.