For 15 years, one nearby exoplanet refused to reveal its secrets, its spectrum stubbornly flat, its atmosphere unreadable. Now the James Webb Space Telescope has pierced the haze and uncovered something no one expected.
For fifteen years, it gave nothing away. Every observation returned the same blank signal, a featureless spectrum that resisted every attempt to read its composition. Astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at it, then ground based observatori... [6296 chars]