Story:
Images: Look at this Planet that NASA found…She’s gorgeous…
Other Versions
This planet NASA found
Fact Check:
A set of three fascinating images are doing rounds on social media alleging to show how the NASA Found New Gorgeous Planet looks. The story garnered attention amidst some related news reports. However, the images are not real ones showing the said new planet.
About NASA’s Discovery of Exoplanets
Over decades, NASA discovered all kinds of strange planets we never knew existed. They have no analog in our solar system and exist outside it, i.e. Exoplanets. NASA also describes a class of planets called Super-Earths, not necessarily similar to our home planet. For instance, in 2020 NASA announced discovery of TOI-561 b is a Super Earth exoplanet that orbits a G-type star. The potentially rocky world is larger than Earth with mass of around 1.59 Earths. You can read more about the Super Earths on NASA website nasa.gov. Again in January 2021, NASA confirmed existence of KOI-5Ab, an exoplanet discovered in 2009 by the Kepler Space Telescope. To explain, KOI-5Ab is roughly as massive as the planet Neptune. It whips around a Sun-like star (part of a triple-star system) every 5 earth days. But unlike the claims in question, NASA did not find a new planet as pictured.
Not Images of Gorgeous New Planet NASA Found
As a matter of fact, Twitter user jessi @paintwater_boba shared the images in question on 17th January 2021 with same claim. The post garnered millions of likes and thousands of retweets amid some aforementioned news reports. Likewise, the fascinating story circulated widely on other social media platforms. However, a day later another Twitter account Among Stars Bot @AmongBot replied they are the creators of the bot that made the photos.
They clarified the images are not real planets and were taken from their blog on Tumblr. The description of the Twitter account mentions the bot generating artistic representations of distant planets. While the main image appeared on their Tumblr blog in January 2019, the second one appeared in February 2020. The third image is in detail a cropped version of the first one. The Twitter account Among Stars Bot in fact shares many such images from their Tumblr page.
So, what you see in the images is not any new planet NASA found – they are artistic creations of a bot.
Hoax or Fact:
Hoax with some valid information.
0 Comments