Scientists find extraterrestrial amino acids in New Jersey meteorite — and a homeowner deserves some credit

The meteorite in which extraterrestrial chemical compounds were discovered. [SETI Institute]

A meteorite that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home last year and landed in a bedroom contained amino acids — the basic building blocks of life — offering a potential clue to how life began on Earth.

An international research team led by the SETI Institute published its analysis of the meteorite in volume 12, issue 29 of the journal Science Advances. The meteorite has been named "Hillsborough" after the area where it fell.

The rock arrived on July 16, 2024, when a fireball passed over New York City, skimmed south of the Statue of Liberty and came down through the roof of a house in New Jersey. It entered the atmosphere at 14.4 kilometers per second and was witnessed by 60 people across five nearby states. The original mass weighed 53 kilograms upon atmospheric entry, but it broke apart in the sky, generating a sonic boom. Only 1.35 kilograms were ultimately recovered.

On July 16, 2024, a fireball passed over New York City, skimmed south of the Statue of Liberty and crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home. [SETI Institute]

Preserved within minutes of landing

What drew scientists' attention to the Hillsborough meteorite was its condition.

Most meteorites are found long after impact, already contaminated by rain and soil. Once terrestrial material mixes in, separating it from the original space-borne components becomes extremely difficult.

This one was different. The homeowner heard a loud noise, walked into the master bedroom and found a hole in the ceiling and dark fragments on the floor. He immediately put on disposable gloves, wrapped the pieces in aluminum foil and placed them in a glass jar.

The meteorite was never touched with bare hands or exposed to rain. It was isolated from the terrestrial environment within minutes of landing.

"Thanks to the homeowner's quick response, it is the most pristine meteorite of its kind that we know of," said Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer at the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center.

The rock is a primitive meteorite that preserves material from the early solar system. Among observed falls of this type, it is only the second such specimen — after one that landed in Indonesia in 2020.

An X-ray image of the meteorite showing a concentration of sodium at the marked location. [Science Advances, Vol. 12, No. 29]

What the salt grains inside the meteorite revealed

The research team split the meteorite open and found tiny grains of concentrated salt. The grains originated near the surface of an asteroid, where water had evaporated and left behind highly concentrated salt — the same process by which seawater dries to leave salt behind.

Highly saline water of this kind promotes the chemical reactions needed to form molecules essential to life, holding the ingredients together and acting as a catalyst for reactions between them. It is the first time evidence of such salty water has been confirmed in this class of asteroid.

Similar traces had previously been found in samples brought back from asteroid Ryugu by Japan's Hayabusa2 probe and from asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The research team is now comparing the salt composition of the Hillsborough meteorite with those samples.

Did life come from space?

The meteorite yielded amino acids — the fundamental components of protein. By weight, it was 1.76 percent carbon and 0.074 percent nitrogen.

It also contained types of amino acids rarely found in Earth's natural environment, including alpha-aminoisobutyric acid and isovaline — compounds almost never used by life on Earth.

The research team concluded these were most likely of extraterrestrial origin. The composition of the detected amino acids also matched forms produced through specific chemical reactions.

"Carbon and nitrogen isotope studies suggest that primitive meteorites like this one delivered organic matter to the early Earth," said Queenie Chan, a cosmochemist at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Nana Ogawa, a researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

Where the ingredients for life came from before life appeared on Earth has long been one of science's great mysteries. The study adds weight to the idea that asteroids and their fragments carried amino acids and other building blocks to the early Earth. The research team concluded that the amino acids in the meteorite were likely formed inside the asteroid through chemical reactions in its salty water.

An artist's rendering of the asteroid believed to be the source of the meteorite. AI-generated image. [SETI Institute]

However, Phil Schmitt-Kopplin, an organic mass spectrometry specialist at the Technical University of Munich, cautioned that "a significant proportion of the compounds were produced through chemical reactions with minerals," adding that "it is still unclear whether these components came from chemical reactions or from an earlier impact."

Some fragments of the meteorite will be kept at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Curator Denton Ebel said he was "moved that such a precious asteroid sample arrived at our doorstep."

The research team said further analysis is needed to determine the full extent to which the salty water inside the meteorite contributed to forming the building blocks of life.

Reference

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2105

Peter Jenniskens et al., Meteor over New York City: Brines in a primitive CM asteroid. Sci. Adv. 12, eaea2105 (2026).

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