A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home has been found to contain the chemistry of the early solar system and molecules crucial for life as we know it.
On July 17, 2024, people cross New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky during the daytime, some of whom heard a loud sonic boom.
The spectacle came from a space rock, weighing around one kilogramme, which zipped through Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour.
Unlike some meteorites, this space rock was particularly fragile, breaking apart about 22 miles above ground, according to Newark Liberty International Airport’s Doppler weather radar, which detected a cloud of fragments.
Only one of those fragments was recovered, as it punched through the ceiling of a master bedroom of a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey.
The impact caused no injuries, and the homeowners quickly put on disposable gloves and collected the black fragments and dust from the bed and carpet using aluminium foil and glass jars.
Now scientists have published detailed analysis of the fragment, including of extraterrestrial amino acids – often viewed as the building blocks of life, and, among other things, carbon.
“There are hundreds of amino acids in this meteorite and the majority of them do not occur naturally on Earth,” said the study’s co-author Dr Danny Glavin, a senior Nasa scientist.
“The suite of amino acids in Hillsborough was even more diverse than those found in pristine samples returned from the carbon-rich asteroids Bennu and Ryugu,” he wrote in an email.
Dr Galvin added: “Most of the amino acids detected in Hillsborough are rare or non-existent in life on Earth, so they are truly extraterrestrial in origin.”
A detailed analysis of the Hillsborough meteorite showed it was a CM-type carbonaceous chondrite.
The C stands for carbonaceous, while the M signifies the Mighei meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite that fell in Ukraine in 1889.
These space rocks are remnants of rocky bodies that were streaking around during the early days of the solar system and contain hydrated minerals and organic compounds.
Primitive carbonaceous chondrites are believed to be the type of space rocks that collided with early Earth and delivered organic matter.
The Hillsborough meteorite “provides more evidence that meteorite delivery of organic matter to the early Earth could have been an important source of organic molecules necessary for the origin of life,” Dr Glavin said.
There are two types of primitive CM meteorites – CM1 and CM2 – the biggest difference between them being how much water altered their composition while they were attached to a larger asteroid.
The researchers classified the Hillsborough meteorite as a CM½ since it exists as an intermediate between the two types.
The sample marks only the second time a CM½ meteorite has been witnessed falling to Earth, noted Peter Jenniskens, the lead author of the study, published Wednesday in the Science Advances journal.
It is the first one that researchers have been able to study in such a pristine sample.
“It is the first CM type meteorite that contained bits of rock that preserved the subsurface of the original asteroid,” Jenniskens wrote in an email.
“We really have a unique window here on the physical properties of the parent asteroid.”
The Hillsborough meteorite may have once belonged to a larger space rock orbiting within the inner asteroid belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
“Some time ago, a significant asteroid family was formed in a large collision and some 6 million years ago a smaller collision destroyed one of these asteroids, from which a piece ended up in near-Earth orbit,” Jenniskens wrote.
“That piece experienced heat/cold cycles from spinning in the sunlight and fragmented about 200,000 years ago. Then it still took that long to hit the small target of Earth.”
Researchers detected high abundances of sodium, likely from icy brines within the original asteroid.
As water evaporated on the space rock, it left behind concentrated salt minerals that could create molecules crucial for life as we know it, according to the researchers.
The discovery of brine on the asteroid is key, said Peter Brown, professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Western University in London, Ontario, who was not involved in the study.
He described this discovery as a kind of a leftover “of percolating water or ice.”
The brine “is a really strong sort of indicator of how water has moved, evolved and in particular how it’s reacted with organics,” he told ITV News’ North American partner CNN.
“Everything we can learn about how water changes this kind of primitive meteorite is super important to sort of astrobiology and early biology on Earth.”
Water may have been preserved beneath the surface of the Hillsborough meteorite’s parent asteroid for an extended period, he added.
Prof Brown said meteorites such as the Hillsborough one contain the chemistry of the early solar system because, while modified by water, they haven’t endured much heating.
Holding it would feel more like soil or clay that falls apart, rather than a solid rock, which reflects its lack of exposure to heat and a higher chance of preserving a snapshot of how water interacted with minerals and organic matter, he added.
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The swift actions of the homeowners in Hillsborough enabled the detection of the brine and other valuable compounds in the first place.
The couple quickly got in touch with study co-author Mike Hankey at the American Meteor Society, who guided them through preserving the sample and minimising contamination.
“We knew almost immediately that what happened to us was incredibly rare and we felt a responsibility to preserve the meteorite for the scientific community,” the homeowners, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
“It’s still surreal to think that this meteorite travelled through space for millions of years before ending its journey in our home.
“The entire experience has been incredible, and we’re honoured to have played a small part in advancing scientific understanding through its study.”
Fragments of the Hillsborough meteorite are being curated at the American Museum for Natural History in New York City.
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