The scientist gave out a photo of a sausage for a picture from space. Twitter believed

The Internet is full of fakes and it is not easy to distinguish the truth from lies. Sometimes even very respectable people, scientists with world—famous names, indulge in practical jokes. French physicist Etienne Klein, director of the French Atomic Energy Commission, tweeted "a unique image from the James Webb telescope." The colorful photo instantly spread on Twitter, causing enthusiastic comments. Later it turned out that "unearthly beauty" is just a photo of a piece of sausage.

Etienne Klein is a well—known person in scientific circles, and among those who are just interested in physics. His authority is impeccable, because he is not only the chief nuclear physicist of France, but also the host of the popular radio program "Questions about Science". Therefore, when Klein published a photo of a space object and wrote that it was the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, everyone believed him.

The post was picked up by Twitter users and soon the picture flooded the French segment of the social network. It was not difficult to achieve this, because Etienne Klein has 90 thousand subscribers.  Exactly an hour later, the professor confessed to an unforgivable prank. Under his astronomical post, he wrote that it was a crudely concocted fake.

Klein said that he photographed a piece of chorizo sausage, which is cooked in Spain. Without even bothering to conjure up a primitive still life in Photoshop, he made a photo of Proxima Centauri out of it. The scientist also clarified that it was not just a funny trolling, but a purposeful action. With his post, the scientist wanted to draw attention to the problem of fakes in social networks.

But some users did not appreciate the joke and were seriously offended. One of Klein's subscribers shamed the professor and accused him of frivolity:

Etienne Klein had to make a separate post, explain in detail the essence of his joke. The physicist also apologized to everyone who took his fake at face value.

It remains to be hoped that the users of the social network who bought into this uncomplicated joke will understand and forgive Klein. Well, we should all be more careful on the web, because there are actually a huge number of fakes there.