A meteorite weighing more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram) that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home two years ago could shed light on ancient water in the solar system.Observers across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky during the daytime on July 16, 2024. As the object whizzed by just south of the Statue of Liberty, it caused a sonic boom felt by New York City and New Jersey residents.The spectacle came from a space rock, estimated to be the size of a heavy airline bag, that zipped through Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 kilometers per second).AdvertisementAdvertisementUnlike some meteorites, this space rock was particularly fragile, and it broke apart about 22 miles (35.4 kilometers) aboveground. Newark Liberty International Airport’s Doppler weather radar detected a cloud of fragments falling to the ground from Staten Island into New Jersey.Only one fragment was recovered, and that’s because it punched through the ceiling of a master bedroom in a Hillsborough, New Jersey, home.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 aluminum foil and glass jars, said Peter Jenniskens, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.Jenniskens is the lead author of a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances that detailed an analysis of the Hillsborough meteorite.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe homeowners also patched the roof of their house before rain fell that evening — a crucial step because the fragile meteor is porous and sucks in water from the air, Jenniskens said.Such quick thinking prevented the meteorite from being overly contaminated. Scientists were able to study the object. The analysis revealed it to be a rare, primitive type of meteorite that provides a window into the early solar system.”We detected a complex suite of amino acids, the fundamental bu …
