Article URL: https://www.seti.org/news/alien-world-chemistry-found-inside-meteorite/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49053708 Points: 33 # Comments: 9

Fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite, broken on impact, with fusion crust from passing at high speed through the Earth’s atmosphere. July 15, 2026, Mountain View, CA -- On July 16, 2024 a daytime meteor shook New York City with a sonic boom as it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty. Now, an international team of researchers reports in the journal Science Advances that a short time later, a more than two-pound meteorite crashed through the roof of a house in the town of Hillsborough, New Jersey. "A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a small primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids—a process not previously known from this type of proto planet world," said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. On that day, a rock the size of a heavy airline bag entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 miles/h (14.4 kilometers per second). Sixty observers from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing the meteor to the American Meteor Society, while sixteen in New York and New Jersey felt the shockwave. "Our cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, as well as a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, captured the meteor, and from that we measured its trajectory," said American Meteor Society operations manager Mike Hankey. "The path traced back to low in the asteroid belt." Daytime meteor (left), impact site and a fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite. The rock was fragile and quickly broke into pieces. The meteor stopped being visible at an altitude of 22 miles (35 kilometers). After it faded, a Doppler weather radar at Newark Airport briefly detected a long cloud of falling pebbles stretching from Staten Island into New Jersey. Hillsborough was at the far end of that cloud, where the largest rocks came down. Only one was recovered because it hit a house. The owner of the house described the scene as follows: "I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom. I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments along with debris and black dust that covered my bed, carpet and surrounding areas.”