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Saturday

The Craftworkers’ Guild Annual Indoor Craft Yard Sale (3a Meetinghouse Road, Bedford)

A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home is now considered one of the most scientifically valuable meteorites ever recovered because it contains the building blocks of life, astronomers say.

On July 16, 2024, a meteorite tore through the roof of a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey, shortly after it shook the New York City area with a sonic boom, according to researchers at the SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to exploring the origins of life and searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The owner of the house told researchers that he heard a crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom. The meteorite had a strong sulfur-like odor and black fragments, debris and dust covered the room.

The meteorite was then preserved by the homeowner using disposable gloves, aluminum foil and glass jars.

“Thanks to the homeowner’s quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 meteorites we know of,” Mike Zolensky of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement.

After observation, scientists learned the meteorite was a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite — an exceptionally rare and primitive type of meteorite, according to a paper published in Science Advances on Wednesday.

A forensic study of the meteorite’s fragments showed they preserved bits of a small, primitive asteroid that had once been soaked in concentrated salty fluids, said Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer for NASA and the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper.

A high concentration of salt in briny fluids can create molecules crucial to life on Earth, and scientists said this meteorite contains some of those building blocks of the life.

The “alien world chemistry” found inside Hillsborough, which also contained a diverse suite of carbon-bearing compounds, amino acids and other prebiotic molecules, suggests that these rare types of meteorites may have shaped the organic inventory of the early solar system and brought the materials to Earth that later would support organic life, the astronomers said.

Dubbed “alien world chemistry” by the SETI Institute, the meteorite, called Hillsborough, contains a diverse suite of carbon-bearing compounds, amino acids and other prebiotic molecules. Researchers say this suggests that these rare types of meteorites may have shaped the organic inventory of the early solar system and brought the materials to Earth that later would support organic life.

The meteorite, which was about the size of a heavy airline bag, entered the atmosphere at about 32,000 mph, sending a shockwave through New York and New Jersey. Dozens of observers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing the meteor to the American Meteor Society.

American Meteor Society cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, captured an image of the meteor, as did a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, Mike Hankey, operations manager at the AMS, said in a statement.

“The path traced back to low in the asteroid belt,” Hankey said.

The fragile rock broke into several pieces, the researchers said. Doppler weather radar at Newark Liberty International Airport detected a long cloud of pebbles falling from Staten Island to New Jersey.

With a toxicity level that is higher than typical air pollution, the thick blanket of smoke from Ontario wildfires currently blanketing a good portion of the East Coast can pose a big risk for those whose jobs don’t allow them to remain inside.

According to the EPA, wildfire smoke contains a mix of gases and tiny particles that can irritate the lungs and airways. In sunlight, some of those gases can also react to form ozone, another harmful air pollutant.

As the Air Quality Index in Pittsburgh reached 240 at 1 p.m. Friday, a UCLA pulmonologist recently told NPR that AQI levels of 100-200 roughly equate to smoking a quarter to half a pack [of cigarettes] a day.

Construction workers, like those on the Commercial Street Bridge project, landscapers or others who work outside for a living and must still venture out, should limit their exposure, wear a mask and limit physical exertion.

“The N95 mask is absolutely the best way to protect yourself and your lungs,” said Dr. Sally Wenzel, director of the University of Pittsburgh Asthma and Environmental Lung Health Institute at UPMC. “If you can’t do that, a surgical mask would probably be next, but not nearly as good.”

A good fit is important.

“You want to be able to — the way we did during covid — put it on your face, breathe in and get a little bit of a suction feeling,” she said. “The mask should collapse a little bit when you breathe in. You want to have as few empty, open spaces for the air to go through so it has to go through the mask to get to your nose and mouth.”

There is no hard and fast rule on break frequency.

“The longer you’re ‘exercising,’ the heavier your breathing is going to be and the more you’re going to inhale the stuff that’s out there,” she said. “[Breaks] might allow you to regain a little bit of your energy, not to have to breathe quite as hard as you were at the end of that hour.”

For those who can stay inside, the focus shifts to keeping the smoky air out of the home.

Steve Boehmer, owner of Boehmer Heating and Cooling in Beechview, offers some insight.

“Have a good filter in place, a clean filter,” he said. “Another thing you can do is run your fan all the time. Most people’s thermostats have a fan switch: auto or on. Auto means that the fan runs when the air conditioner runs. If you turn it on, the fan runs all the time. That fan running all the time can make your filter work more of the time, keep the air clean and the particles down.”

Filter choice, he said, is important, too.

“There are different levels of filters based on their MERV rating,” said Boehmer. “The higher the number, the tighter the weave is and the more particles it can capture. But the higher the rating, the more restrictive the airflow is and it can start to hurt your system. A piece of cardboard is a great filter; it’s not going to let anything through. But it’s not going to let any air through either. So you want to be careful you don’t go too high on that rating.”

The EPA recommends setting the air to recirculate when driving as well.