A New Jersey home’s freak meteor strike could help explain how life began

☑️A meteor crashed through the roof of a Hillsborough home in 2024

☑️The homeowner carefully preserved the meteorite

☑️The rare space rock may offer clues about the origins of life on Earth

HILLSBOROUGH — A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home may provide clues to the origin of life.

NASA said that a fireball, which is a meteor larger and brighter than normal, appeared over New York City around 11:15 a.m. on July 17, 2024. Based on its own observations and those from the American Meteor Society, it moved west over Union County at an estimated speed of 38,000 mph. It eventually landed on a house in Hillsborough

The owner of the home handled the meteorite, later named "Hillsborough," with gloves and aluminum foil, according to the SETI Institute. He placed the fragments in glass jars, which kept them in pristine condition for researchers to study fragile minerals and organic compounds rarely seen in recovered meteorites.

"Thanks to the homeowner's quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 meteorites we know of," said Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

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Daytime meteor (left), impact site and a fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite

Clues to the origin of life?

Researchers say the meteor may have come from the surface of an asteroid where liquid saltwater could have rested, possibly providing clues to life's origins on Earth. Carbon-bearing compounds, amino acids, and other prebiotic molecules on the meteor may help scientists understand what "building blocks of life" may have been delivered to the early Earth.

The fireball was one of two events in the skies over New Jersey that day. A sound described as thunder or a loud truck going over a bump was heard around the same time the meteor was spotted. There turned out to be no connection between the events.

Naval Air Station Patuxent River Chief Petty Officer Patrick Gordon told New Jersey 101.5 that an aircraft launched from the Maryland base late in the morning of Aug. 17.

"It was an aircraft that reached supersonic speed in compliance with the rules of the test track, the airspace off the shore, which means that it was within 30 miles of the shore," Gordon said.

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