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Universe much smaller than first thought
NASA Scientists have been forced to re-evaluate the size of the universe following the chance discovery, by work experience student Jimmy Mullet, that the Hubble team had been using the telescope incorrectly by "looking through the wrong end".
For around 15 years the Hubble, a telescope in Earth orbit about the size of a large school bus, had beamed what were thought to be stunning images of the universe back to earth. However, just as looking the wrong way through a pair of binoculars makes things look much further away, photographs taken by the Hubble are having to be reassessed and their scale revised.
"It's a bit of a shock to discover that the distances to most of the planets in our solar system turn out to be commutable," said Professor Douglas Ramsbottom, an astronomer at the Ramsbottom telescope in Oldham. "Instead of spending all those billions on training for long distance space travel and on dehydrated food research, little did we know that we could do the return trip to Mars in three hours on two packed lunches. Still, we did get Teflon, Velcro and non-stick glue, and where would Jamie Oliver be without those?"
The misuse of the Hubble has many "serious implications", NASA said. The 'light year' is soon to be replaced with the 'light week', the distance to the moon has been revised to 1233 feet 6 inches and two new planets recently 'discovered' in our own solar system have turned out to be golf balls hit by Alan Shepard on his visit to the Moon in 1971.
George Bush was meanwhile said to be "in deep shock" yesterday after the re-evaluation of images used by the CIA in the build up to the Iraq war showed Iraq to be only five miles from the US border.
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