Meteorite that crashed into NJ home holds building blocks of life, scientists say
A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home two years ago contains some of the building blocks of life, scientists say — and is among the rarest space rocks ever recovered.
The meteorite fell in Hillsborough, New Jersey, on July 16, 2024, and is the subject of a recent study published in Science Advances on July 15 — just in time for its two-year anniversary on Earth.
The homeowner heard a “loud crash” at the time and found a hole in the ceiling that “covered the bed, carpet and surrounding areas,” according to a release from the SETI Institute, a private research organization based in Mountain View, California.
“I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments,” said the homeowner, in a comment originally given to the scientists and researchers at SETI and NASA.
No one was injured at the time, though the property was damaged.
“The meteorite had broken into many fragments, including dust, and a strong sulfur-like odor was present in the 122 air,” said the report.
Researchers identified it as a rare intermediate CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite, one of only two witnessed meteorite falls of that subtype.
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“Our cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, as well as a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, captured the meteor, and from that we measured its trajectory…. The path traced back to low in the asteroid belt,” said Mike Hankey, operations manager for the American Meteor Society, in a SETI Institute statement.
NASA said the meteorite preserves some of the oldest material in the solar system, recording chemical processes that occurred more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Fox News Digital reached out to NASA for additional comment.
In a July 15 release, NASA said an amateur astronomer quickly recognized that a freshly fallen meteorite had landed on his New Jersey property — then collected the fragments with gloves and stored them in aluminum foil and glass containers to preserve the samples.
That proved to be crucial to the research project. The rock is helping scientists “uncover new clues about ancient water, the chemical evolution of primitive asteroids, and the ingredients that may have helped make life possible throughout the early solar system,” NASA said.
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The significant meteorite was dubbed the Hillsborough meteorite, and understanding its origins required “expertise from multiple scientific disciplines,” added the agency.
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Danny Glavin, a senior scientist in the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-author of the study, said one of the biggest surprises was the complexity of the amino acids in the meteorite, as well as its organic compounds.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, while organic compounds are carbon-based molecules considered essential to life.
“It’s just more proof that the chemical building blocks of life could have been delivered — and are still being delivered — to Earth today by these carbonaceous asteroid fragments,” Glavin said in a release.
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Peter Jenniskens, meteor astronomer at both NASA’s Ames Research Center and a study co-author, said that the team’s analysis of the meteorite’s trajectory, mineral composition and organic chemistry are helping scientists better understand primitive asteroids.
The research enables scientists to “build one of the clearest pictures yet of how primitive asteroids such as the asteroid Erigone evolved chemically over billions of years,” he said.
“When we have both a documented fireball and a quick recovery of its meteorite, we can learn not only what the rock is made of, but where it came from in the asteroid belt,” added Jenniskens.
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