Hillsborough Meteorite Contains Life's Building Blocks and Salty Water Evidence

A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home in July 2024 has been found to contain amino acids and evidence of salty water, offering new clues about the origins of life on Earth. The Hillsborough meteorite, a rare CM carbonaceous chondrite, fell on July 16, 2024, after an ultrabright meteor streaked over New York City and exploded, with fragments smashing through a roof in Hillsborough. The homeowners, who remained anonymous, preserved the samples with guidance from amateur astronomer Mike Hankey of the American Meteor Society. Scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and other institutions analyzed the rock, publishing their findings in Science Advances on July 15, 2025. The meteorite is an intermediate CM1/2 type, only the second such witnessed fall. It contains microscopic fractures with sodium-rich material, indicating salty water once flowed on its parent asteroid, and a complex array of amino acids not naturally occurring on Earth. Radar and camera data traced the meteorite's origin to asteroid 163 Erigone in the inner asteroid belt, with a collision history dating back 155 million years. The rock entered Earth's atmosphere at 32,000 miles per hour before landing in the bedroom.