Meteorite that crashed in New Jersey may hold clues to how life began

By Stephen Beech

A meteorite that smashed into a house in the United States two years ago contains "salty" fluids that may be building blocks of life, say scientists.

They believe the "alien world" chemistry found inside the space rock can potentially create molecules crucial to life on Earth.

A daytime meteor shook New York City with a sonic boom as it passed south of the Statue of Liberty on July 16, 2024.

A short time later, a more than two-pound meteorite crashed through the roof of a house in the town of Hillsborough, New Jersey.

Details of a painstaking study of the Hillsborough meteorite led by an international research team, including scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) - which looks for life beyond Earth, have now been published in the journal Science Advances.

Lead author Peter Jenniskens, of the SETI Institute, said: "A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids - a process not previously known from this type of proto planet world."

He said that, on that day, a rock the size of a heavy airline bag entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour.

Sixty observers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported spotting it to the American Meteor Society, while 16 in New York and New Jersey felt the shockwave.

American Meteor Society operations manager Mike Hankey said: "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."

The rock was fragile and quickly broke into pieces.

The meteor stopped being visible at an altitude of 22 miles.

After it faded, a Doppler weather radar at Newark Airport briefly detected a long cloud of falling pebbles stretching from Staten Island into New Jersey.

Hillsborough was at the far end of that cloud, where the largest rocks came down.

Only one was recovered because it hit a house.

The house owner said: "I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom.

"I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments along with debris and black dust that covered my bed, carpet and surrounding areas."

He then immediately preserved and documented the entire scene using disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars.

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When scientists examined the rocks, they determined it belonged to one of two known types of primitive meteorites called CM-type carbonaceous chondrites, where the letter "M" refers to the Mighei meteorite that fell in Ukraine in 1889.

Study co-author Mike Zolensky, of NASA, says analysis found fragments that were more extensively altered by water on the meteorite's parent asteroid than is typically seen in CM2 carbonaceous chondrites.

He said it was the 22nd observed CM-type meteorite fall, but only the second witnessed fall of a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite, following the Kolang meteorite that fell in North Sumatra, Indonesia, in 2020.

Jenniskens said: "Thanks to the homeowner's quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 meteorites we know of."

Zolensky and his colleague Jangmi Han found small salt-rich CM1 fragments within the Hillsborough meteorite, suggesting they originated from a near-surface region of the parent asteroid where liquid water evaporated and concentrated salts.

They are now working to identify the salt minerals for comparison with similar phases found among samples returned to Earth from other asteroids.

The high concentration of salt in briny fluids can potentially create molecules crucial to life on Earth, according to the research team.

They explained that brines allow phosphate to remain in solution and can catalyze chemical reactions between organics and precipitate minerals.

Cosmochemist Queenie Chan, from Royal Holloway University of London, said: "Isotope studies of carbon and nitrogen suggest that primitive carbonaceous chondrites, including CM-types, delivered organic matter to the early Earth.

"The Hillsborough meteorite contained 1.8% by weight of carbon and 0.07% of nitrogen, and had carbon and nitrogen isotopes typical for CM-type meteorites."

She says the meteorite contained a wide variety of soluble organic compounds, and its compositional range confirms that the Hillsborough meteorite was more altered by water than most other CM-type meteorites.

Organic mass spectrometry specialist Phil Schmitt-Kopplin, of Technical University Munich, Germany, said: "A high fraction of compounds were the product of organic chemistry with minerals.

"We do not know if these magnesium organic compounds were contributed by brine chemistry or were simply left over from earlier impact shock processes."

He explained that, in living organisms, organo-metallic compounds are found in blood and used in photosynthesis.

Among the soluble organic compounds were also many amino acids.

NASA astrobiologist Danny Glavin and his team concluded that the delivery of amino acids, carboxylic acids and other soluble organic molecules by CM-type bodies may have contributed to the prebiotic organic inventory that preceded the emergence of life on Earth.

Their analysis suggests the complex distribution of amino acids observed in the Hillsborough meteorite formed within the parent body, likely assisted by brine fluid chemistry.

Some of the meteorite fragments will now be displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Curator Denton Ebel said: "We are thrilled that nature delivered such a precious asteroid sample on our doorstep."