Webb Telescope Discovers Salt Clouds on 'Pink Planet' 57 Light-Years Away

Fifty-seven light-years away, a world known as the Pink Planet has quietly confirmed what theorists long imagined but could never prove: that salt clouds drift through the skies of cool gas giants, filling a gap in our understanding of how atmospheres form across the universe. In just two hours, the James Webb Space Telescope accomplished what years of ground-based effort could not, reading the chemical signature of GJ504b's atmosphere and finding water vapor, methane, ammonia — and salt. The discovery is less about a single planet than about the expanding reach of human perception, and the re