Sometimes, you gotta wonder. “Incredible” shots of galaxies far, far away often look (to me) like bad MRI photos. Sometimes, the pictures are stunning, but other times, the untrained eye sees what looks like a smudge on a blurry picture that portends new stars, galaxies, lifeforms, Starbucks, et al.
And then there’s the orbiting James Webb Space Telescope, regularly peppering us with ostensibly stellar star stories. But we’ve been duped. Noted French physicist, Ètienne Klein, recently tweeted an alleged Webb picture he claimed was from a distant star, according to CNN. But upon further review, turns out it was a bunch of pork- and I don’t mean self-serving, political spending. The orb in the “picture” was actually a surreal, scarlet piece of chorizo- pork sausage.
Klein initially waxed poetic about the “level of detail” the picture provided, saying that Proxima Centauri was 4.2 light years away (almost 25-trillion miles). With our existing space/travel knowledge, it would take about 6,300 years to get there, so exercise, rest up, and stay hydrated if you’re planning a trek.
After numerous retweets among twinkling, twaddling twits, Klein acknowledged that the picture was actually just a slice of chorizo set against a black background. He then patronizingly warned people to be “wary of arguments from positions of authority…” Thanks, Yoda. Hey wait a minute! So the moon landing was faked?! The L.E.M. was really LEGO?!
Maybe we don’t need that TMT project. We can just sporadically send out pics of pizza toppings and claim… whatever. A new planet near Neptune? Er, that’s an onion. As Jimi would’ve said, “excuse me, while I kiss the sky”. The Large Hadron Collider, a Swiss particle accelerator (I prefer a blender for particle acceleration to make smoothies) is trying to prove Big Bang Theory postulates related to the Higgs Boson (aka “the God particle”) that, perhaps, seven people on the planet really understand.
It’s now hypothesized that water existed on Mars… two billion years ago. Hosanna, finally a solution for Red Hill! The list of amazing finds (or theories) always titillates, while we pedestrians still can’t figure out which direction to place the toilet paper on our toilet roll holders, and we’re still flinching from that dang “12:00” light flashing on our VCRs. I’m not a luddite, I’m hugely pro-science, -discovery, and -facts, but sometimes…
So it’s chorizo for chumps and the world keeps spinning.
Think about it…