The James Webb Space Telescope has read the chemical recipe of a distant exoplanet TOI-6894 b. By watching the planet's transit in front of its tiny star, astronomers captured light seeping through the gas envelope, like a chef holding broth up to the light to guess the ingredients. Spreading the light into a rainbow with spectroscopy, they found the fingerprints of familiar substances: methane (natural gas), ammonia (like household ammonia), water vapor, carbon dioxide, and a pinch of carbon disulfide — a molecule forged by the star's ultraviolet light. The proportions of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur matched Jupiter's. So gas giants across the galaxy seem to be cooked from the same recipe, even around red dwarfs — stars five times lighter than the Sun. For the first time, ammonia appeared clearly in an alien atmosphere, and carbon disulfide had previously only been spotted around a couple of scorching worlds. This is a big step in studying the atmospheres of other planets. The discovery builds on the work of Michel Mayor, Didier Queloz (first discoverers of exoplanets), and William Borucki, the creator of the Kepler telescope.
Ammonia became the first nitrogen-containing substance to clearly show up in an alien atmosphere's spectrum. Carbon disulfide usually hides and had only been spotted around a couple of hot worlds.