A rock that crashed through a bedroom ceiling in 2024 may hold the key to the mystery of how life began.
The rock, which weighs about two pounds, came from a fireball streaked through the sky over New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania on July 16, 2024.
It caused a sonic boom felt in New York City and Parts of New Jersey, ending with a crash inside the master bedroom of a home in Hillsborough.
“I heard an immense crash and felt the house shake,” the homeowner told The New York Times. He was working from home at the time.
“I open the door, and I see a hole in the ceiling above my bed,” and the room smelled like rotten eggs as fine dust covered the room.
No one was hurt, and after grabbing some disposable gloves, the homeowners scooped up what fragments and dust they could and got them into glass jars and aluminum foil.
Thanks to the owner’s quick thinking, scientists were able to study the rock without it being contaminated by Earth’s environment.
What they found was a rare, primative type of meteorite, CNN reported.
“We detected a complex suite of amino acids, the fundamental building blocks of proteins, in water extracts of the Hillsborough meteorite,” Dr. Danny Glavin, senior scientist for the Sample Return in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said.
He was a co-author of a recent study on the space rock.
It’s called CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite, CBS News reported.
“Most of the amino acids detected in Hillsborough are rare or nonexistent in life on Earth, so they are truly extraterrestrial in origin,” Glavin said.
It was coated in a salty fluid or brine, which had never been seen on an object like this before, co-author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens said. He said it indicated the asteroid it came from had water that had evaporated, according to CBS News.
High concentrations of brine can “create molecules crucial to life on Earth,” he explained.
The meteorite came from what remained in the early days of the solar system and contains hydrated minerals and compounds.
This is only the second example of a meteorite like it falling, the SETI Institute said.
The meteorite will be in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, CBS News said.
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