New Jersey meteorite traced to briny asteroid — may hold clues to life's origins

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A space rock exploded through a bedroom ceiling in New Jersey, and scientists have now traced its origins to a strange, briny asteroid once visited by a NASA mission.

Two years ago on July 16, 2024 in the middle of the afternoon, a sonic boom shook New York City as a fireball streaked through the sky. The culprit? A rock the size of a heavy airline bag weighing roughly 110 pounds (50 kilograms). The meteorite hurtled over the east coast before crash-landing in a house in Hillsborough, New Jersey where the homeowner found it, reeking of sulfur. In studying this meteorite, scientists think that it could have come from the surface of an asteroid where liquid saltwater could have rested, possibly providing clues to life's origins on Earth.

"In a way, you can think of it as smelling the origins of life's atmosphere," lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center, told Space.com.

Despite its sulfuric stench, in a stroke of absolute luck, this meteorite crashed into the right house. After traveling through our atmosphere and heating up, searing through the sky and then crashing through a roof and then a bedroom ceiling, the meteorite broke apart into pieces. The homeowner not only sprung into action to collect these pieces of space rock into jars, they did so with gloves, protecting the rocks and keeping them remarkably well-preserved.

"He had the wherewithal to put on gloves and take out jars," Jenniskens said. "And for this type of meteorite, carbonaceous chondroits, it's very important because they just suck in every moisture you can think [of]." So if he would've handled the rocks with his bare hands, oils or moisture from his hands could have completely contaminated the rock, which is common in found meteorites. The homeowner also thought to call the American Meteor Society very quickly after recovering the rocks, making these samples unusually pristine.

A fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite. (Image credit: SETI Institute) Of course, some of the rocks were found to have some fiberglass and even carpet remnants on them after crashing through the roof of a house, Jenniskens said. But the integrity of the meteorites was still incredibly well-preserved for scientific investigation.

What did they find in these space rocks?

Once the rock fragments were collected, they were brought in for analysis led by co-author Mike Zolensky, a meteoriticist at NASA's Johnson Space Center. And they found the now-dubbed "Hillsborough meteorite" to be full of organic compounds created through chemical reactions with minerals also present in the rock as well as amino acids. They also found that the rock was more altered by water than other meteorites of its kind.

They classified the meteorite as a CM2 carbonaceous chondrite, which are primitive meteorites that formed in the early solar system . But CM2 meteorites typically come from parent asteroids that haven't been significantly altered by water. Another type of meteorite known as CM1 typically comes from asteroids with water. The Hillsborough meteorite doesn't fit neatly into either category.

Despite being a CM2, they found evidence that its parent asteroid must have had water, leading them to further classify this rock as a CM1/2, a category between 1 and 2. This is only the second meteorite of this type observed on Earth.

"Thanks to the homeowner’s quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 meteorites we know of," Jenniskens said in a statement .

They also found small, salty fragments inside the meteorite, leading the researchers to conclude that this rock may have come from a near-surface area of its parent asteroid, where liquid water evaporated and salt accumulated. A salty, briny asteroid.

This salty brine on the rock's parent asteroid could be an important piece to study, as researchers think that such a brine could ignite the chemical reactions between organic molecules and minerals that could create life. Some theories suggest that life on Earth began thanks to minerals and molecules deposited by crashing meteorites , and further study of such a well-preserved piece of a briny asteroid could help to put those pieces together.

And while the team doesn't know the full story behind the organic compounds and amino acids found in this rock, early analysis suggests that the amino acids present formed on the rock's parent asteroid with the help of chemical reactions in this briny environment.

Another major finding came from information from even before the crash. Thanks to reports from members of the public and footage from cameras (even doorbell cameras) across the eastern U.S., experts led by Jenniskens were able to piece together the trajectory of the object. Doppler weather radar at Newark Airport even helped to put the pieces together, detecting a long trail of pebbles stretching from Staten Island to New Jersey falling from the rock as it fell apart and out of the sky. This combined intel provided experts with the object's speed, and the direction from which it came.

In piecing together the rocks' trajectory, "we can say where they came from in the asteroid belt," Jenniskens said. "This one seemed to have come out of the inner asteroid belt."

In fact, he added that this meteorite's parent asteroid likely came from an area of the asteroid belt already observed in a flyby by NASA's Lucy mission, which is exploring the asteroids of the solar system. Could it be possible that Lucy observed the same bit of rock that ended up in a bedroom in New Jersey?

Jenniskens added that "If you hear about a meteorite fall in your area, please check your dash cams and video cameras and security ring [cameras], and even your cell phones." Who knows, you might have even accidentally captured footage that helps researchers to better understand a mysterious rock from space.

And if you live in the greater New York City area and want to get a closer look at this space rock, some of the meteorite fragments will be on display, curated at the American Museum of Natural History.

This work was described in a study published in the journal Science Advances.