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French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

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Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#71
post #9

This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. Whereas we have long known that the moon is made of cheese. I think Klein is floating a test balloon to gauge the public's willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory of the heavens.

A branch of that theory posits that black holes are higher dimensional beings that happen to like the taste of this universe. Also that entropy proves expiration dates are misleading; shelf life is not a cliff but a monotonically decreasing value.

Also that the universe is a U shaped cylinder.

I believe string theory deals with what happens at either end

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#72
After thinking about this for a minute, I think the point wasn’t that people shouldn’t have fallen for this in particular, but to give everything a tint of uncertainty. It’s a pretty clear cut example of “no matter how believable it was, it can still be not even a little bit true”. In many contexts I’d call that a rather unproductive observation, but in the context of fake news, we have many people perceiving different realities built on a whole network of strong beliefs about what exists and what happened. Uncertainty about everything is probably actually exactly what’s needed to break free of a grip like that.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#73

> A photo tweeted by a famous French physicist supposedly of Proxima Centauri by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually a slice of chorizo. > … > Klein told French news outlet Le Point that his intention had been to educate people about fake news online While I respect the position that people should always check sources, “person famous in their field posts a lie about something well within their field, then tut…

IDK if it's that smug. It was just a prank/troll. Possibly, it got a bit more circulation than expected or was less obvious than expected. It feels kind of like a "ha! on your toes" style that translates poorly from personal into online media.

As a prank, it's fine. But they tried to make it a lesson about fake news, which is not very useful.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#74

> A photo tweeted by a famous French physicist supposedly of Proxima Centauri by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually a slice of chorizo. > … > Klein told French news outlet Le Point that his intention had been to educate people about fake news online While I respect the position that people should always check sources, “person famous in their field posts a lie about something well within their field, then tut…

The picture he posted is so obviously and visibly a slice of chorizo that it really is no more than a good joke, nothing smug about it. IMHO, it does demonstrate his point very well if some people took his statement that it was Proxima Centauri at face value simply because he is an expert.

It is not "obviously and visibly a slice of chorizo" to me ... google pictures of venus and it's not clear that this photo is in any way clearly a fake to a lay person.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#75

> A photo tweeted by a famous French physicist supposedly of Proxima Centauri by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually a slice of chorizo. > … > Klein told French news outlet Le Point that his intention had been to educate people about fake news online While I respect the position that people should always check sources, “person famous in their field posts a lie about something well within their field, then tut…

> person famous in their field posts a lie about something well within their field

This heavily implies Klein is involved with astronomy, which he is not.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#76
post #9

This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. Whereas we have long known that the moon is made of cheese. I think Klein is floating a test balloon to gauge the public's willingness to consume the 'celestial charcuterie' theory of the heavens.

> This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. I don't think it does. It can both be true that Proxima Centauri is made of Chorizo and that the French Scientist tweeted a picture of some Chorizo that was not Proxima Centauri.

>It can both be true that Proxima Centauri is made of Chorizo and that the French Scientist tweeted a picture of some Chorizo that was not Proxima Centauri.

Things get less clear-cut if we consider the "one electron universe" theory...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if there were a ball of meat the size of a star, it would collapse into an actual star, although smaller and more dense. I would really be interested to know what Steller atomic composition most closely matches that of a sausage.

Sausage != Meat. (Might be for chorizo but I'm from the UK)

You silly sausage...

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lot of fun if someone competent with physics explained how celestial bodies would behave if they were made of meat. That'd be a fun Youtube video imo.

I think that if there were a ball of meat the size of a star, it would collapse into an actual star, although smaller and more dense. I would really be interested to know what Steller atomic composition most closely matches that of a sausage.

So what your saying is that it would cook itself as it collapses and somewhere in the process there'd be a point where the sausage is perfectly toasted?

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#79

The thing is: the photo is OBVIOUSLY a slice of sausage. I don't understand how anyone could be taken in at all.

I can see both. It was weird going in already knowing it was fake and thinking "that looks like a star".

I can see how someone with less exposure to both could be confused.

Re: French scientist's photo of ‘distant star’ was chorizo

#80
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This article presupposes that Proxima Centauri is not, in fact, made of chorizo. I don't think it does. It can both be true that Proxima Centauri is made of Chorizo and that the French Scientist tweeted a picture of some Chorizo that was not Proxima Centauri.

> It can both be true that Proxima Centauri is made of Chorizo and that the French Scientist tweeted a picture of some Chorizo that was not Proxima Centauri. Things get less clear-cut if we consider the "one electron universe" theory... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

> clear-cut

booooo....

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