The sky there is full of salt. It sits 40 light-years away. A giant, freezing sphere drifting in the dark. In infrared, it glows a deep pink. But it is what floats in the atmosphere of VHS 1256 b that made astronomers stop. The James Webb Space Telescope peered into its weather systems and found clouds not made of water vapor, but of sodium sulfide and potassium chloride. Salt. It is one of the coldest objects we have ever managed to image directly. Every time we point that telescope into the dark, we find out the rules of Earth do not apply anywhere else.

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