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Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey home

Fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite, broken on impact, with fusion crust from passing at high speed through the Earth’s atmosphere.

July 15, 2026, Mountain View, CA — On July 16, 2024 a daytime meteor shook New York City with a sonic boom as it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty. Now, an international team of researchers reports in the journal Science Advances that a short time later, a more than two-pound meteorite crashed through the roof of a house in the town of Hillsborough, New Jersey.

"A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a small primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids—a process not previously known from this type of proto planet world," said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

Meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home contains ‘extraterrestrial’ amino acids

A meteorite weighing more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram) that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home two years ago could shed light on ancient water in the solar system.

Observers across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky during the daytime on July 16, 2024. As the object whizzed by just south of the Statue of Liberty, it caused a sonic boom felt by New York City and New Jersey residents.

The spectacle came from a space rock, estimated to be the size of a heavy airline bag, that zipped through Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 kilometers per second).

Meteorite that crashed into New Jersey home contains "alien world chemistry," scientists say

A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home held prebiotic molecules and other "building blocks of life," astronomers said in a newly published paper. 

The meteorite struck the home in July 2024. The homeowner preserved the fragments in glass jars using disposable gloves and aluminum foil, allowing an international team of experts to study them in detail, the researchers said in a paper published Wednesday in the journal ScienceAdvances.  

When scientists examined the preserved fragments, they were able to determine the meteorite was made of a rare, primitive material called CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite. This is only the second observed fall of such a meteorite, making it "one of the most scientifically valuable meteorites ever recovered," according to a news release from the SETI Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in California. 

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